By: Rhona O'Connell, Head of Market Analysis
Switzerland’s September trade figures were released earlier this week and as usual the precious metals numbers make interesting reading.
For the countries that we monitor with respect to gold, i.e. Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia. Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey, the UAE, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the USA, Swiss net exports for the first nine months now exceed those for the whole of 2020, but are just 85% of the tonnage in the first nine months of 2019.
The table below is ranked by tonnage imports from Switzerland in the first nine months of 2021. Where the percentage changes are negative because they reflect a switch to net imports or to net exports the number are highlighted in yellow.
Net Swiss exports to India, (t)
Source: Swiss Federal Customs Administration, StoneX
Among these countries, India and the Far East are running ahead of 2019 levels, which should not come as a surprise as pent-up demand starts to become unleashed. That said, India is relatively quiet at the moment despite the receding of the virus. Diwali starts on 4th November, however, so activity is likely to pick up smartly in the next couple of days.
Net Swiss exports to Hong Kong & China, (t)
Source: Swiss Federal Customs Administration, StoneX
Among the more interesting changes include the fact that the U.K. has imported 157t of gold into Switzerland so far this year, of which 70t were in September. This looks like material being sent to the Swiss refineries for manufacture into small bars, as demand is starting to pick up in the Far East (although Indonesia is a laggard). Further, Shanghai has been trading at a premium to loco London for some weeks now – and as the People’s Bank has been issuing import quotas again recently this now looks like the recent development of genuine demand rather than constrained import supplies.
Taking Hong Kong and mainland China together certainly underlines this hypothesis, as net exports into these two from Switzerland bounded up to 107t in September. They have been net importers of gold from Switzerland since February, with a monthly average of 22t in January to August, so this latest number is instructive – as are the numbers for the Turkish market, which is struggling.
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