The gold market is booming.

(Baonghean.vn) -While not as chaotic as the Hanoi market where crowds lined up in the rain to buy gold, Vinh City has seen a resurgence of activity in the gold market over the past two days. On July 25th, domestic gold prices continued to fall, a decline that significantly impacted the sentiment of those holding or intending to accumulate gold.

On the morning of July 25th, the North Central Gold Center was quite crowded with people buying gold. While processing a transaction for one customer, another came in to order 10 more taels, forcing the staff to call for additional stock because the current inventory was insufficient. The sheer volume of customers surprised the staff, as gold had been almost non-existent for a long time.



Gold prices continued to adjust downwards late this afternoon.

The saleswoman here said that people mainly buy gold in the early morning and late afternoon. Most buyers are individual customers, purchasing around five to a few taels, sometimes up to ten taels, but the number of buyers has increased significantly.

Ms. Hien, residing in Truong Thi ward, took advantage of the early morning hours to buy 10 SJC gold bars. Ms. Hien stated: "After monitoring the news, compared to yesterday (July 24th), world gold prices have fallen quite sharply, and domestic gold prices have also been slightly adjusted downwards. Therefore, I believe this is a reasonable time to buy 10 gold bars for short-term trading, at a selling price of 38.77 million VND per tael."

Another customer from Cau Giat also came in to buy one gold bar. Meanwhile, Ms. Tan from Hung Phuc ward said that the safest option is to put money in a savings account, but the interest rates are too low now, only 7-8% per year, and even lower per month. With bank interest rates dropping sharply, she didn't get much return, so she decided to withdraw her money to buy three gold bars. She didn't intend to use them for business, but because the price of gold is relatively low right now, she decided to buy them.

According to Mr. Tuan, head of the sales department at the North Central Gold Center, the daily gold trading volume reached 70 taels, a relatively high figure compared to mid-June when people were cautious ahead of the State Bank's settlement deadline (June 30th), with very few buyers and sellers. Previously, the State Bank's strict management of gold bars had caused a quiet gold market and sluggish trading among the population. After gold peaked at 48.3 million VND/tael in October 2012 and then experienced a prolonged decline, it has now fallen below 35 million VND/tael (mid-June 2013) and is currently at 39 million VND/tael, making gold attractive to investors, and many people are hoarding it.



Many people were buying and selling gold at Kim Thanh Huy gold shop (Vinh City).

At Kim Thanh Huy gold shop, a large number of people came to buy gold. Although this is not a licensed gold bullion trading business, the electronic display still showed the SJC gold bullion price at 37.570 million VND/ounce for buying and 39.200 million VND/ounce for selling (at 9 am). The shop owner told us that this was the publicly listed price, and that she would give us a discount if we bought from her. Gold bullion was reduced by 200,000 VND/ounce, and round gold rings were reduced even more. The shop owner also said that with the significant price fluctuations in recent days, businesses have to consider safety and increase the buy-sell spread.

Late this afternoon, domestic gold prices continued to fluctuate downwards. At the North Central Gold Center, the buying price was 38.130 million VND/ounce and the selling price was 38.680 million VND/ounce. The cautious decrease by domestic gold trading businesses caused the price difference between the two markets to widen to 4.9 million VND, instead of 4.5 million VND as in previous days.

Thu Huyen