Dubai Emerges as Big Export Market for Indian Gold

DUBAI: There is a new-found golden love between India, the world’s largest gold consuming country and Dubai, a top global gold trading city. Dubai which generally exports gold to India is these days importing the yellow metal from India.

In the last three months-January, February and March-of 2009, India exported nearly 10 tons of gold coins to Dubai, the City of Gold, which has several large India-based gold jewellery show rooms.

According to figures from the Bombay Bullion Association, while gold imports by India, one of the top importers of the yellow metals in the world, dipped to virtually zero levels in February and March, gold exports from India have gone up. And, thus, Dubai has emerged as the largest export market for Indian gold coins and jewellery items.

”High prices of gold has forced several gold business houses in India to export scrap gold to Dubai. In fact, turning old gold into gold coins and then selling to the Dubai market is a big business with several large gold dealers in India,” bullion analyst Mark Robinson told Commodity Online.

He says Dubai has emerged as a large export market for gold coins and gold jewellery from India. "It is a reversal of the export-import market. All these months, Dubai used to export gold to India. Now India exports gold to Dubai," Robinson added.

Global gold consultancy GFMS says rising gold prices in the last six months has turned India from a large importer of gold to an exporter.

According to Gargi Shah, metals analyst at GFMS, the significance of India’s changed role as a major importer to exporter of gold is very interesting.

Check Shah’s description of gold usage patterns here: “For instance, my recent trip to Ahmedabad revealed that the buy:sell ratio of jewellery at the retail level has dramatically switched. In 2008, for example, a retailer would typically sell 10 kilogrammes and repurchase around one kilogramme of old jewellery over say a week (i.e. he would need to buy additional metal in the open market).”

”By contrast, in 2009, the same retailer is now purchasing 8 kilogrammes of old gold jewellery per day whilst only selling around 200 grammes of new jewellery. This has led to a significant amount of metal surplus from scrap vis-à-vis the demand in the market. Usually the capacity of the trade to hold the metal (whether a retailer, bullion dealer or any other entity) is at best one week. But the flow of scrap has remained very strong, forcing the market into a substantial discount and making the export of metal profitable.”

”My colleagues who look after the Middle Eastern markets have confirmed the fact that the flow of the metal has changed between the two markets – Dubai and Switzerland, both of which are major exporters of bullion to India, are now receiving considerable quantities of Indian origin scrap.”

Analysts like Robison and Shah point out that the trade partnership between India and Dubai is increasingly being written in gold.

In fact, India was the top gold trading partner of Dubai for 2008. While gold trade through Dubai rose 53 per cent to $29 billion in 2008 against $19bn in the previous year, the country that carried out the largest gold trade with the Emirates city was India.

Traders say gold trading between India and Dubai has boomed thanks to the fact that there are a large number of jewellery shops owned by Indian businessmen in Dubai, and across other Gulf countries.

Joy Alukkas, Managing Director of Joyalukkas Group, one of the largest gold business houses in India and the Middle East says India is the largest gold trading partner with Dubai because Indians are the largest expatriates working in Dubai and other Middle East countries.

Dubai has several major Indian jewellery chains like Joy Alukkas, Atlas Jewellery, Sky Jewellery and Malabar Gold.

According to statistics released by Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC). gold exports from Dubai reached 371 tonnes in 2008, an increase of 29 per cent compared to 287 tonnes in the previous year.

For the 12 months ending December 31, 2008, about 674 tonnes of gold was imported into Dubai, up 21 per cent compared to 559 tonnes in 2007. More than 100 countries served as gold import partners to Dubai in 2008, led by the UK and India. During the same period, Dubai exported gold to a record 64 nations, with India and Switzerland topping the list of export partners.

Here are some interesting facts on the gold trade in Dubai:

**The total value of the gold traded through Dubai in the second half of 2008 reached $15.99bn, up 57 per cent compared to $10.16bn during the corresponding period in 2007 and up 22 per cent compared to $13.07bn in the first six months of 2008.

**Gold imports in Dubai rose 21 per cent to reach 674 tonnes in 2008 compared to 559 tonnes in 2007 while exports rose 29 per cent to 371 tonnes compared to 287 tonnes in the previous year.

**Gold jewellery demand in the UAE dropped from 99.8 tonnes in 2007 to 93.3 tones last year although there had been a 32 per cent increase in investment demand of gold —from 7.5 tonnes in 2007 to 9.9 tonnes.

**Dubai imported gold from more than 100 countries in 2008 and exported to 64 nations.