Chinese Gold Demand And The World Gold Council’s Estimates GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

  Alasdair Macleod provides very good explanation for the difference between Eric Sprott calculations and WGC estimates, which are dramatically underestimating the real demand for Gold from China this year.

Peter Schiff: On Taper, China's Bombshell Announcements For Treasuries, Dollar And Gold GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

 "Peter Schiff talks about the bombshell of the year - China has announced the Mother Of All Tapering -  PBOC Says No Longer in China's Interest to Increase Reserves. China is ready to reduce its balance sheet and they do not have to sell any US Treasuries - during the operation Twist they have used the golden opportunity and rolled over the long term treasuries into the shorter maturities. China can just allow US to repay maturing US Treasuries. We do not think here that they will accept Bitcoin. They have made this announcement after the record buying of Gold and some people are estimating that official Gold reserves are much higher than officially recognised today."

China, India, Turkey and Thailand Buying Record Amount of Gold - What Do They Know The Others Don't? GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

Finance And Economics:

Chinese gold demand and the World Gold Council’s estimates

Alasdair Macleod – 22 November 2013

There is considerable disagreement about Chinese gold demand, with delivery figures on the Shanghai Gold Exchange and import/export figures for Hong Kong suggesting the real totals are far higher than those published by the World Gold Council and Thompson-Reuters GFMS.

Recently Eric Sprott of Sprott Global Resource Investments Limited tackled this issue andwrote an open letter to the WGC pointing out that import/export figures show far higher levels of gold demand than the WGC’s estimates for Asia, particularly China, Hong Kong, Thailand, India and Turkey. The response is not on the WGC website, though it appears to be partially quoted elsewhere.

It seems that Sprott and the WGC are trying to do two different things. Sprott is interested in how much gold is actually taken into a country net of exports, irrespective of its use category, taking the view that there can be no more accurate estimate of overall gold demand, irrespective of how it is used. The WGC is trying to identify how much gold is used for specific purposes, which given the opaqueness of the market means they will never track all of it down. Crudely put it is top-down versus bottom-up.

To see how different the results can be let’s look at the solid figures for China and Hong Kong for the first nine months of 2013 which are set out in the table below, before comparing the result with that of the WGC.

Chinese mainland
Shanghai Gold Exchange delivered		1,671.6
HK exports to China		164.9
Less Chinese exports to HK	264.9	_______
Net imports into China		1,571.7
Hong Kong
Total imports		1,926.2
Less exports to China	164.9
Less re-exports to China	1,077.5
Less exports to rest of the world	46.0
Less re-exports to rest of the world	78.8	_______
Net imports into HK (vault storage)		559.0
Total identified imports for China and Hong Kong		2,130.7

All these are published figures which we can assume to be accurate. Mainland China does not release import/export statistics for gold but we know what has been physically delivered through the Shanghai Gold Exchange, the monopoly physical market, and we know what Hong Kong imports exports and re-exports. We can also be reasonably certain that these figures exclude off-market government transactions, such as direct purchases from the mines of all China’s gold production, given that Chinese-refined bars are never seen in circulation. Exports from Hong Kong refer to gold processed into a materially different form from that imported, typically jewellery; so exported to the Mainland they are additional to SGE deliveries. Re-exports refers to imports re-exported with no material processing, and therefore can be assumed to be bullion trans-shipped and destined for the SGE, ignoring for simplicity’s sake that some may have bypassed the SGE and been sent directly to private buyers. Exports and re-exports to the rest of the world obviously must be deducted.

The conclusion is that between them gold absorbed by private sector purchases in Hong Kong and China amount to at least 2,130.7 tonnes in the first nine months of this year, or 2,841 tonnes annualised. This compares with the WGC’s estimates from their quarterly Gold Demand Trends of only 818.6 tonnes for the same period, or 1,091.5 annualised. Given the hard evidence of Hong Kong and SGE statistics it appears that the WGC’s figures substantially understate the true position. Furthermore, any analysis of gold demand will fail to account for the increase in gold ownership not constrained by national boundaries.

Estimates of China’s demand also exclude government purchases of gold in foreign markets, and gold that may have been acquired and imported by wealthy Chinese from foreign locations without going through Hong Kong or the SGE. So without taking into account these extra factors China and Hong Kong’s combined imports from the rest of the world exceeds all other mine supply by at least 580 tonnes on an annualised basis.

It now becomes clear that without significant leasing by Western central banks total Asian demand could not be satisfied at current prices, because there is no evidence of material selling by existing holders of above-ground stocks, with the exception of ETF liquidation which is minor compared with the amounts involved."

Eric Sprott's Open Letter To The World Gold Council GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

  

  ZeroHedge has published Eric Sprott's open letter to The World Gold Council. Coupled with his recent interview we can see the much stronger demand, particularly, from China for Gold.

Eric Sprott: "Gold And China To Dominate The World." GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

"Eric Sprott is very bold with his call for Gold at $2400 next year. He stands his ground and continues to talk about overwhelming demand for physical Gold from China. According to Eric, investing in the right Gold and Silver equities provides the opportunity of a life time for wealth creation now.

  Now after the Debt Ceiling can is kicked down the road for a few weeks without resolving anything, investors will be back to the analysis of the real economic situation. We can forget about Taper until the next year at least with the looming circus entertainment Debt Ceiling Increase 2.0. Default is avoided, but the damage is done. We are very positively surprised by the amount of US Dollar negative articles in the mass media these days. The story about the End of the Reserve Currency of Choice - US Dollar is making its way to the surface now.

  Last week US Dollar has printed the closing below the all important 80.00 level and is now below the 200MA. Gold on its part is in the break out mode, finally and has painted the set of very interesting charts."

September Nonfarm Payrolls Huge Miss - Gold Spikes Up, Data Leaked Again GLD, MUX, TNR.v, GDX

"We have September Nonfarm Payrolls with the Huge Miss and Gold Spikes Up immediately. Data was leaked yearly again with Gold printing:

+$5 at 8.28 and 

+$18 at 8.33

  

  "Cowboys" shorting the Gold market, according to Eric Sprott, must be in a serious trouble now. The yearly trade on October 15th has amounted to 640 million and Gold was Sold at 1270 - 1250 levels. Now with CFTC out of hibernation can we expect at least some kind of investigation?

  There are more and more calls about the US Dollar loosing its Reserve Currency of Choice status now. Default was avoided, but the damage is done.
  All FIAT currencies are based on trust. The geopolitical shift is making its way to mass media and we are witnessing the groundbreaking developments in the Gold market. Nobody can manipulate it all the time and China will be busy writing "Thank You Cards" to the FED and related Cartel members at LBMA and BIS, buying all the physical Gold available for Delivery at this levels.

  We can forget about the Taper until mid 2014 now and Janet Yellen will be following the new FED's playbook written by Michael Woodford. Peter Schiff has dissected for this situation very well."

ZeroHedge:

Eric Sprott's Open Letter To The World Gold Council

Authored by Eric Sprott of Sprott Global Resources,

Dear World Gold Council Executives;

As you very well know, the business environment for gold producers has been extremely challenging over the past few years. While demand for physical gold remains extremely strong, prices on the COMEX have fallen precipitously. This contradictory situation is the single most important obstacle to a healthy gold mining industry.

In my opinion, the massive imbalance between supply and demand is not reflected in prices because available statistics are misleading. It is not the first time that GFMS (and World Gold Council) statistics come under pressure from the investment community. In his now celebrated “The 1998 Gold Book Annual”, Frank Veneroso demonstrated the inconsistencies in GFMS gold demand data and proceeded to show how they grossly underestimated demand. The tremendous increase in the price of gold over the following years vindicated his conclusions.

For very different reasons, we are now at a similar pivotal point for gold. Over the past few years, we have seen incredible incremental demand from emerging markets. Indeed, so much so that the People’s Bank of China has announced that it is planning to increase the number of firms allowed to import and export gold and ease restrictions on individual buyers.¹ In India, the government has been fighting a losing battle against gold imports by imposing import taxes and restrictions.² Moreover, Non-Western Central Banks from around the world are replacing their U.S. dollar reserves by increasing their holdings of gold.³

But, demand statistics reported by the World Gold Council (WGC) consistently misrepresent reality, mostly with regard to demand from Asia.

To illustrate my point, Table 1 below contrasts mine production with demand from some of the world’s largest gold consumers. According to WGC/GFMS data, the world will mine, on an annualized basis, about 2,800 tonnes of gold for 2013.

But, I adjusted these figures to reflect mine production from China and Russia, which never leaves the country and is used solely to satisfy domestic demand. After adjustments, we have a total world mine supply of about 2,140 tonnes. On the demand side, I make some in-house adjustments to better represent demand from emerging markets. To proxy for gold consumption in China, Hong Kong, India, Thailand and Turkey, I use net imports of gold, as reported by their various governmental agencies. While imports might in general be an imperfect proxy for demand, those countries see very little re-export of what they import and keep most of it for themselves, so it is not unreasonable to assume that what they import they “consume”, on top of their domestic production. To this I add the demand, as estimated by the GFMS, from other countries and that of central banks. I annualized the year-to-date figures and found that for this year, annualized total demand is approximately 5,200 tonnes. On that basis, “core” annualized demand is approximately 3,000 tonnes more than mine supply.

TABLE 1: WORLD GOLD SUPPLY AND DEMAND 2013, IN TONNES

Sources: GFMS data comes from the WGC’s “Gold Demand Trends” publications for 2013 Q1 & Q2. Chinese mine supply comes from the China Gold Association and is up to August 2013, the annualized number is a Sprott estimate.⁵ Russian mine supply comes from the WBMS (Bloomberg ticker WBMGOPRU Index) and is for 2012, 2013 statistics are still unavailable. Chinese data is taken from the Hong Kong Census and Statistics Department and covers the period Jan.-Aug. 2013 and is annualized to account for the 4 missing months to the year. Changes in Central Bank gold reserves are taken from the IMF’s International Financial Statistics, as published on the World Gold Council’s website for 2013 Q1 & Q2 and include all international organizations as well as all central banks. Net imports for Thailand, Turkey and India come from the UN Comtrade database and include gold coins, scrap, powder, jewellery and other items made of gold. The data is for 2013 Q1 & Q2. ETFs data comes from Bloomberg’s ETFGTOTL Index.

However, these figures also exclude what the GFMS dubs “OTC investment and stock flows”, which is a name for a simple plug because no one really knows what is traded in the OTC market. Also, to remain conservative and avoid possible double counting, I exclude the category “technology” from my demand estimate, which the WGC/GFMS estimates to be about 400 tonnes a year.⁶ Certainly, some of this demand is captured by the demand numbers for China, Turkey, India or Thailand, but it is near impossible to disentangle them. Nonetheless, it should be kept in mind that my demand estimate is conservative and probably understated by a few hundred tonnes.

Of course, another important source of supply is gold recycling, which the GFMS estimates at about 1,300 tonnes for the year. However, this number is questionable at best as gold recycling is hard to estimate. But, most importantly, a large share of it is probably done in India and China, which as mentioned before do not re-export their gold. In the context of my analysis, recycling from those countries should therefore be excluded from the total supply number.

The real incremental source of supply this year has been the flows out of ETFs. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, and as shown at the bottom of Table 1, ETFs have seen outflows of approximately 724 tonnes year-to-date. On an annualized basis, this represents an additional supply of 917 tonnes. But, this incremental supply is only temporary. As shown in Figure 1 below, ETF holdings of gold seem to have stabilized at around 1,900 tonnes after a rapid decline in the first few months of 2013.

The evidence presented here is clear, demand for physical gold is extremely strong and, in reality, without the massive outflows from ETFs (half of world mine supply), it is hard to imagine how this demand would have been met. Since ETFs have a finite size (about 1,900 tonnes left), these outflows cannot continue for much longer (see our article on the topic).⁷All these observations point to a considerable imbalance between supply and demand (unless Western Central Banks decide to fill this void with what is left of their reserves). If recycling was reduced by one half (China, India and Russia) and the temporary sales from ETFs were excluded, demand could be as high as 5,185 tonnes versus supply of 2,140 tonnes. The supply-demand imbalance is obvious to all.

FIGURE 1:TONNES OF GOLD IN ETFS

Source: Bloomberg

As was the case when Frank Veneroso first published his book in 1998, the GFMS methodology understates demand and the World Gold Council, by using data from the GFMS, misleads the market place.

To conclude, I urge the leaders of the World Gold Council, for the benefit of their own members, to improve the quality of their data and find alternative sources than the GFMS, which paints a misleading picture of the real demand for gold. This lack of quality information has certainly been one of the driving factors behind the lack of investors’ confidence towards gold as an investment. Gold has been one of the best performing asset classes since 2000, and the World Gold Council should be promoting it accordingly.

Regards,

Eric Sprott"