The recent falls in the gold price have some big players reassessing their gold strategies. These reassessments are also motivated by the euro-zone woes. No doubt the approaching US fiscal cliff is in minds as well.
The Wall Street Journal has recently reported that senior Korean central bank officials have indicated a desire to rebuild their gold holdings.
Mr. Kim said the central bank needs to boost its gold holdings even after two purchases last year that took the amount to 54.4 metric tons, or about 1% of the total reserves.
"Unlike other financial instruments, gold doesn't produce interest. But given its symbolic presence and usefulness as a safe haven in times of crisis, the BOK needs to buy more. We may do so this year," he said.
The Russian central bank is also reported to have added gold assets recently as well, reversing a trend of running down their reserves.
Who the sellers have been, or will be, is not clear, but they will likely be other central banks, and these transactions will not necessarily hit the open markets for physical gold for full volumes.
Comparative pricing
You can find our independent comparative pricing for bullion, coins, and used 'scrap' in both US dollars and New Zealand dollars which are updated on a daily basis here »
New Zealand exports
In an earlier story, we noted that New Zealand's gold exports were running at a high dollar value, and we posted this chart to illustrate the rise.
However, readers noted that this merely indicated a rising price, and did not necessarily indicate rising volumes.
We have dug into the data further, extracting the tonnage values exported and it does indeed paint a quite different picture. In fact, New Zealand's gold exports were at their second lowest level in volume terms in Q1 2012 since at least 1996.
Higher prices have not yet raised New Zealand outputs. This chart shows the trends.
New Zealand exploration
The ODT recently ran a story about a new 'gold rush' in Central Otago that will interest some readers. L&M Mining and Glass Earth Gold have added extraction capacity in the region to the large operations that Oceana Gold runs.
Otago Chamber of Commerce chief executive John Christie said gold-mining was a "significant contributor" to the Otago economy.
"By the time you add in the direct impact of the jobs and the indirect impact of that support for the local economy, you can see how valuable the resource is for our region," he said.
"I think we're going to see increasing opportunities around mining for various different minerals, and gold is particularly attractive."
These operations benefit from high gold prices and will presumably be looking closely at what the lower market for gold means to their prospects. The small local communities also benefiting will have a similar interest.
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