India Gold Spending to Get a Boost from Strong Monsoon Season
Note: This article is courtesy of Iris.xyz
By Frank Holmes
Since before recorded human history, the people of India have had an insatiable appetite for gold, treasuring it not only for its flawless natural beauty and religious significance but also as a superb store of value.
This tradition carries on today, with India’s demand for gold jewelry in 2015 reaching more than 668 tonnes, nearly a third of total global demand and second in size only to China.
I’ve pointed out many times before that the price of gold is largely driven by the Love Trade in India. Demand fluctuates year-to-year depending on several factors, the two most significant being the number of Indian weddings held in the fourth quarter and the amount of crop revenue that’s generated as a result of the summer monsoon season.
The wedding season is still three months away, but the June to September monsoon season is currently in full swing. It’s impossible to overstate just how crucial this period is to India’s important agriculture sector. During an average monsoon season, the Indian subcontinent can receive close to 80 percent of its total annual precipitation.
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Most reports so far this year indicate surplus rainfall, with 12 inches being dumped nationwide last month alone, the fifth best month since the 1990s. This should come as welcome relief to Indian farmers, whose incomes have been squeezed by two long years of drought.
It’s also good news for gold consumption.
Converting Crops into Gold
Because of the above-average monsoon, gold spending in India is expected to increase 11 percent in 2016/2017 over the previous September to August crop season, according to Thomson Reuters. This would help reverse weak second-quarter jewelry demand in India due to a gold jewelers’ strike that closed the market for six weeks early in the quarter, a new 1 percent excise duty on jewelry and rising prices.
Click here to read the full story on Iris.xyz.