The recent skyrocketing gold price has sparked a frenzy of gold buying and gold buyback in China, as the retail price of gold jewelry of some brands in the country surpassed 700 yuan (about 96.77 U.S. dollars) per gram on Thursday.
In his latest speech delivered on Wednesday, U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Hayden Powell hinted that the Fed would not be in a hurry to cut interest rates. After his speech, the international gold price has hit a new high, reaching 2,300 U.S. dollars per ounce.
With the rise in gold prices, many gold jewelry wholesalers gathered recently in Zhaoyuan City in east China's Shandong Province, which is well known for its abundant gold deposit and production and is occasionally nicknamed "China's gold capital".
In some gold jewelry stores in Zhaoyuan, purchasers are "especially" cautious about gold jewelry buying, and fashionable gold jewelry with traditional Chinese culture becomes popular among buyers instead of the ones in traditional styles. Meanwhile, the amount of off-line gold raw materials buyback has surged, as many big gold hoarders choose to sell gold at high prices.
"With gold prices hitting record highs, the daily gold buyback volume here is about 300 to 500 kilograms. Our daily quota is now between 600 and 700 million yuan (about 82.94 million to 96.77 million U.S. dollars)," said Sun Xiaohui, deputy general manager of the business department of Shandong Zhaojin Gold and Silver Refinery Co., Ltd..
Some gold stores and companies in Shandong also opened online services for consumers to cash out the gold.
"We have taken various measures such as giving subsidy coupons, providing free mailing, and giving discount handling fees to let consumers quickly cash out gold. The highest single-day online gold cashing-out volume reached more than 3,000 grams," said Lin Yu, a person in charge of gold cash-in business of an online platform.
"China's gold capital" sees increased gold buyback volume amid skyrocketing prices
