By Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul
When the talk of Indian gold jewelry demand arises, the gold tonnage imported to India is typically cited. And it's breathtaking, with a lot of that gold slated for India's spiritual season, called Deepavali, or 'Festival of Lights,' which begins in mid-October and ends in mid-November. The World Gold Council anticipates India to import 1,000 tons of gold by 2012, or maybe even this year, as yearly imports to the second-most populated nation of the world expected to reach the equivalent of Switzerland's total gold reserves.
“Demand for jewelry was the biggest contributor to gold demand, accounting for 54 percent of the total,” bullion expert Frank Holmes wrote in a February piece for MineWeb.com. “That’s a 17 percent rise despite gold prices jumping 26 percent in many currencies.”
Holmes continued, “India led the world in gold jewelry demand with more than 745 tons. China was a distant second at just under 400 tons and the U.S. third at 128 tons. While the pace of consumption has slowed in several countries, gold consumption for jewelry remains at elevated levels around the world.”
But what about silver?
As India proceeds to Vasubaras, the first day of Deepavali celebrations in the state of Maharashtra, traders and business people consider this day an auspicious one “for making important purchases, especially metals, including kitchenware and precious metals like silver and gold,” according to Wiki. As the demand for gold rises in India, silver demand rises as well.
Another factor which could drive higher India imports of silver is the high cost of gold.
Malaysian news outlet, The Star, reported that the rally in the gold price has created a problem of affordability among many Indians. Many Indians have always struggled financially to purchase the sacred metal for religious ceremonies, with some families spending their entire life's savings on the wedding of their young bride. But gold has increasingly become more prohibitive to many families in India as the rally enters its 11th straight year of higher prices.
But, as in any 'commodity', the market adapts with a little bit of substitution along the way—with producers using a little less gold and a little more silver to output the final product.
“By using innovative techniques, we can flatten 22-carat gold and then stuff it with an alloy that is a mix of copper and silver to give the ornament weight,” says Amit Prakash a Delhi-based jeweler.
How much silver will be involved in this substitution? It's difficult to estimate; no statistics are available. But a small number multiplied by a massive number equals a big number.
However, the biggest factor slated to take the demand for silver in India to new heights comes in the way of silver's investment qualities as a hedge against monetary inflation and resulting rising consumer prices. Inflation is standard fare of Indian life.
Though gold serves two purposes in India, one of tradition and the other monetary, it's silver that may play an ever-increasing role in as a hedge against the ravages of inflation. While gold reaches unaffordable prices to India's low per capita PPP of $3,500 (2010 CIA Factbook; US per capita PPP is $47,200), silver's much lower price per ounce will become increasingly more attractive, not just in India, but everywhere.
“Rapid inflation is eroding the earnings of the common man. One has to understand how the import of gold has reached $9 billion for a month, while the yearly average is around $22 billion,” Sudhir Chakraborty, bullion analyst at Standard Chartered Bank, told Mineweb in June.
Though Chakraborty doesn't mention silver, Google has some interesting statistics regarding the interest in the white metal in India.
The graph, below, courtesy of Google Trends, reveals that the number of web surfers interested in the search term 'silver price' has risen sharply since the CFTC announcement in 2010 regarding the JP Morgan/HSBC manipulation scheme, with people from the cities of Pune, Bangalore, Calcutta, Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi (English widely spoken in the former British colony) topping the list, leaving the US and other developed nations in the dust. Not New York City, London or Chicago, but Denver, tops the list of US cities next in line after India's six!
“This is what makes today’s gold market different from the 1970s,” said Frank Holmes.
“Back then, today’s emerging market powerhouses, such as China and India, had no global economic impact. Now, these countries aren’t just at the forefront of the gold market, they are global leaders in economic growth.”
Ditto for the silver market.
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