According to the results of July, deliveries of Russian gold to China soared 8.6 times - from $12.7 million to $108.8 million. In annual terms, the volume of deliveries increased 50 times - in July last year, Russia supplied gold to China for only $2, 2 million. This is evidenced by the data of the General Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China, which drew attention to RBC.
The publication notes that China bought raw or semi-finished gold from Russia, which may indicate a desire to further melt it down for further resale. At the moment, Russia has classified statistics, so it is possible to estimate the volume of its exports only by countries that receive Russian products. Chinese statistics helped for the first time record the flow of Russian gold from Western markets (now inaccessible to Russia due to sanctions) to Asian ones. If a year ago China bought about 30-40 kg per month, then in June these figures reached about 1.2-1.5 tons, and in July these figures doubled.
Another possible destination for Russian gold is the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The country does not publish customs statistics, but the export of Russian gold to the Arab state is indirectly evidenced by a sharp increase in gold imports from the UAE to Switzerland. The publication attributes this to the fact that the UAE is traditionally considered a market in which they try to hide the origin of dubious gold. In March-April, gold worth $1.3 and $2.3 billion was sent from the UAE to Switzerland, respectively, and by the end of July - only $66 million.
Alexey Vyazovsky, vice-president of the Golden Coin House, believes that Russia is gaining new sales markets only thanks to significant discounts on its products. In his opinion, the size of the discount can reach 30% of the market value of gold, which, however, still makes these deliveries extremely profitable for Russia. The cost of producing an ounce of gold in Russia is in the region of $700-750, while the cost of an ounce on foreign markets is now estimated at $1,760. At the same time, the expert is confident that countries buying Russian gold can easily melt and resell it to third countries.
Western countries have included Russian gold in the latest packages of adopted sanctions, after which the world's largest trading platforms - Great Britain and Switzerland - refused to work with it. The London Stock Exchange has a generally accepted right to evaluate the quality of gold in terms of the purity of supply, and after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Russian bars lost their “Good delivery” status - which meant for buyers that the supplier of the goods was reliable.
Sanctions and deprivation of status led to an excess of gold in the Russian market. They began to actively impose it on retail investors, talking about the reliability of investments in the precious metal. In fact, Russian gold mining companies simply cannot sell goods abroad and are trying to sell the precious metal at least within Russia. Experts note that the investment attractiveness of gold is extremely doubtful, fraught with risks, and profitability is not guaranteed even under favorable conditions.
