Reduction in gold price witnessed during the last few days failed to woo buyers of gold ornaments but investors rushed to jewelers to buy pure gold biscuits hoping to earn some quick bucks, jewelers said on Tuesday.
Former president Multan Jewellers Association Rauf Shah said people who wished to buy gold ornaments for weddings or just wanted to gift them to their loved ones were perhaps waiting for prices to go down even further.
Another jeweller, Zahid Qureshi, however, had a different observation stating that jewellers’ market witnessed a sudden surge in sale of gold ornaments and comparatively, around 15 percent more buyers visited jewellery shops and finalised deals.
Gold prices, which had surged to 63,000 per tola in March 2013 in Multan’s Sarafa market, witnessed gradual decrease and went down to around Rs 52,000 per tola a few days ago. However, from that point onwards, the prices maintained a bullish trend and on Tuesday noon it was recorded at Rs 55,700.
Some other jewellers, however, on condition of anonymity said local jewellers were keeping prices up by Rs 500 to Rs 1500 as compared to the international market price on the pretext of shortage of gold.
Jeweller Izharul Haq Bhutta said that contrary to past practice, jewellers were offering gold at lower prices to clients only if they were ready to get the delivery delayed by a week.
An investment expert Itrat Abbas from a noted commodity trading house said the prices had gone down but even then they were not advocating investors to do long term online trading. He, however, added that short term physical trading could yield profits but investors needed to keep an eye on the price fluctuations.
Rauf Shah said people who used to buy light weight gold ornaments were visiting jewellery shops as usual and there was no extraordinary surge in sales. He attributed it to commencement of summer- a long season Pakistanis do not find fit to arrange marriages in; which are often scheduled for winters.