In Pictures: UAE gold shoppers use discounts on making charges and other offers to add to their collections

Gold prices remain stuck at a steep $1,825 an ounce plus levels – in the last 30 days, they have gone up by $50 dollars. Any chance of prices softening during summer seems such a remote possibility. So, any plans UAE shoppers had about topping up their gold and jewellery collection should be done with a lot of planning. (On Friday (July 30), the Dubai Gold Rate for 22K was Dh208 a gram.)

According to the London-based World Gold Council, the price rise notwithstanding, there will be enough demand for bars and coins – which has been a constant theme with shoppers since the second-half of last year. Jewellery sales too will show improvements over 2020, but not in spectacular ways. Average jewellery sales this year will likely be lower than the five-year average.

Will shoppers get comfortable at current price levels? Gold did dip under $1,800 in the year-to-date, but on those occasions, prices got immediately pulled back. Shoppers thus didn’t have much of a glimpse of prices closer to $1,700-$1,750.

Jewellery sales in the UAE made gains in the first-half of this year from the all-time lows of 2020. But with tourists still absent, retailers have been completely reliant on resident shoppers turning up at the stores.

All the leading jewellery retailers have cut making charges, and shoppers have responded by ‘trading up’. Where they bring in their old jewellery and replace them with the latest collections. The hope is that with the retailer having cut making charges, it will be a win-win for shopper and seller alike.

There are still shoppers waiting for prices to head back to pre-COVID-19 normalcy, which would be somewhere around the $1,600 mark. For that to happen, a lot of factors need to come together.

The global economy needs to start humming to the tune of higher growth, and key markets such as India will need to notch up success in controlling the virus for good. “The economic picture has been improving, but there are still potential headwinds,” warns Krishan Gopaul, Senior Analyst for EMEA markets at World Gold Council. “Gold price alone isn’t the decisive factor any more. The pandemic will still be a significant influence.”