China News Service, Beijing, April 28 (Reporter Liu Yuying) Affected by the epidemic, China's gold production and consumption both declined in the first quarter of 2020.
According to the statistics released by the China Gold Association on the 28th, domestic raw material gold production was 82.63 tons in the first quarter of 2020, a decrease of 10.14 tons compared with the same period in 2019, a year-on-year decrease of 10.93%.
Affected by the New Coronary Pneumonia epidemic, the cumulative national mineral gold production fell by 19.51% year-on-year in January-February. In March, as domestic epidemics eased and the price of gold rose, key gold companies (groups) fully utilized resources, technology and management Advantages, orderly promote the resumption of production and resumption of production, the resumption rate increased rapidly from 80% at the end of February to more than 98%, and the national mineral gold output in March achieved a year-on-year increase of 5.55%. It is expected that production will return to normal in April.
In addition, in the first quarter of 2020, China's imported raw materials produced 23.66 tons of gold, an increase of 16.69% year-on-year. If this part of imported raw materials was produced, the country produced a total of 106.29 tons of gold, a decrease of about 6% year-on-year.
In the first quarter of 2020, the actual national gold consumption was 148.63 tons, a decrease of 48% compared with the same period in 2019. Among them: 92.04 tons of gold jewelry, down 51% year-on-year; 37.67 tons of gold bars and gold coins, down 47% year-on-year; 18.92 tons of industrial and other, down 32% year-on-year.
According to the China Gold Association, since the outbreak of the epidemic, strict preventive and control measures have been adopted nationwide, superimposing the factors of rising gold prices, and the consumption of gold jewelry and gold bars have been greatly affected. Due to the customary hoarding of goods before the Spring Festival and the spread of foreign epidemics, export orders could not be delivered. Although gold jewelry processing enterprises resumed work one after another, it was difficult to achieve full resumption of production due to the small number of processing orders.
In the first quarter of 2020, the overall price of gold showed an upward trend. Following the trend of international gold prices, the Au9999 gold of the Shanghai Gold Exchange opened at 341.95 yuan per gram in 2020 and closed at 364.70 yuan per gram at the end of March. The quarterly average price was 354.19 yuan per gram, an increase of 24.20% over the same period in 2019. It is worth noting that the domestic gold price has been higher than the international gold price for a long time, but since March, the price of domestic and foreign gold has shown an obvious "inverted" state.
According to the trading volume data of the Shanghai Gold Exchange, affected by the spread of the New Crown epidemic, commodity prices and global stock market fluctuations, capital market hedging demand is urgent, the gold hedging function is sought after, and the gold trading volume has increased significantly. (Finish)