Gold price achieves new peak, Rs30,000 per 10gms

Karachi—The prices of gold broke all previous records on Wednesday hitting the mark of Rs30,000 per 10-gram on the back of sturdy international buying.

The 10-gram gold jumped to Rs30,000 after an increase of Rs210, while tola became costlier by Rs245 to stay at Rs35,000. In Peshawar the price of gold per tola hit a record high at Rs36,100 from Rs35,000.

Analysts said the fluctuations in gold prices will continue in coming days whereas there is no chance of stability in prices even after Eid-ul-Azha. “Weakening dollar and rising crude are behind escalating gold price ,” commented a local bullion trader.

The international gold price increased by $10 per ounce and touched a new peak of $1117 per ounce on Wednesday intra-day trade. The yellow metal is witnessing an upward trend especially for the past three months on the back of weak dollar and stock offloading from International Monetary Fund.

International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently sold 200 metric tons of gold stocks to India and still plans to offload more holdings in near future.Rising pressure on US dollar is also inducing forex players to shift to the commodity markets. And the best available market for investments is metal, these days.

Escalating crude oil prices is pushing gold to make new highs, while the decision of converting foreign exchange reserves of some countries from dollars to gold and other strong currencies have also encouraged investors to this yellow metal. Local traders say that people are showing interest in gold to save their currencies from further depreciation.

The lower rate of return on offered by different saving schemes and weak dollar has also increased gold sales. Contrary to that, the traders say that rising gold prices have hit their sales hard by almost 50 percent and admitted that they are not receiving the number of customers; they did last year despite wedding season.

A leading gold dealer said that the precious metal was closed at Rs29,657 per 10 grams on Tuesday as its international price touched $1,101 per ounce. Tola (11.664 grams) price surged by Rs400 to reach a record at Rs35,000. However, silver remained unchanged at Rs441.42 per 10 grams.

Nasir Mahmood