HCMC – Many gold traders given quotas since November 24 to import gold have not placed overseas orders as the current price difference of half a million Vietnam dong a tael is deemed not attractive enough.
By Thu Thuy - The Saigon Times Daily
HCMC – Many gold traders given quotas since November 24 to import gold have not placed overseas orders as the current price difference of half a million Vietnam dong a tael is deemed not attractive enough.
Saigon Jewelry Co. (SJC) on Wednesday quoted its benchmark SJC gold at VND36.33 million per tael, an increase of VND380,000 from the previous day. A tael equals to 1.2 troy ounces.
During the day, the local gold price even hit VND36.42 million per tael, about VND500,000 higher than the global price.
An executive from SJC said that the company had imported only a small volume of gold to meet the local demand but it did not use up its quota. This hesitation was also confirmed by an executive from the Vietnam Agribank Gold Corporation as well as several other gold traders.
Nguyen Ngoc Que Chi, director of Sacombank Jewelry Co. (SBJ), said that Sacombank as SBJ’s parent firm had a quota, but the trader was not hasty in importing the safe-haven asset as the profit margin remained pretty low.
In general, most of gold traders do not hurry to import gold if the difference between the local and global gold prices is around VND500,000 per tael because the import cost alone was up to VND300,000 per tael, Chi said.
In addition, many institutions fear that they cannot obtain more quotas if the local gold price rose much higher than the world level in future, she added.
Traders who have been allocated quotas have until the end of this year to import gold, so they still have one more month to consider the best time for import.
After hitting VND36.42 million per tael on Wednesday morning, gold eased in the afternoon and even fell to VND36.29 million per tael after many people rushed to sell the precious metal. Meanwhile, the global price increased by US$5.2 an ounce to US$1,391.4 on Wednesday, narrowing down the price difference to VND300,000 per tael at the end of the day.