Wednesday, August 31 2011 12:13
Gold and silver prices up 3% in Armenia over week
ArmInfo. The average growth of precious metals in Armenia totaled 2% after gold and silver prices grew 3% over the week amid less significant rise of platinum price and insignificant change of the palladium price. The Depository of Precious Metals and Stones of Armenia, the Finance Ministry of Armenia, has established the prices of precious metals for August 29- September 4 2011.
Thus, the official price of gold (gold bullions) established for the current week was up 1.6% as compared to the prices for the last week and totaled 21,488.51AMD per gram. Silver price was up 4.3% to 493.60 drams/g, platinum was up 1.9% to 21937.57 drams/g, and palladium was up 0.1% to 8929.62 drams/g.
The source reports that as comparing to early January 2011, gold price in Armenia grew 34%, silver price - 45.7%, platinum price grew 10% and palladium - 23.
Precious metals rose in price 9.7% for Q1 and 2.5% for Q2. Gold and silver price were up17.2% for Q1 amid 2.2% rise of platinum and palladium price. In Q2 gold price rose 8.8%, platinum and palladium price - 1.5% amid 1.6% fall of silver price. In general, precious metals grew in price 12.3% after silver price rose 26.5% , gold price - 15.1%, while platinum and palladium price grew just 3-4%. In June precious metals fell in price 4%. Later on July 10 the prices began to grow. Thus, within July precious metals grew in price almost 4%: gold and silver - 5.6%, platinum and palladium - 2.2%. In August (August 1-29 2011) precious metals grew in price 5% thanks to the 14.3% growth of gold price, 5.4% growth of silver prices, 4.9% growth of platinum price and despite 4.6% decline of palladium price.
By data of the world stock exchanges, on August 29 gold price hikes continued after the statement by Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, regarding recovery of the biggest economy in the world.
Comex December gold futures prices as of 2"03 Moscow time were up 1.4% to 1821.8 USD an ounce. Bernarke said, in particular, "the financial crisis and the subsequent slow recovery have caused some to question whether the United States, notwithstanding its long-term record of vigorous economic growth, might not now be facing a prolonged period of stagnation, regardless of its public policy choices: Of course, the United States faces many growth challenges. Our population is aging, like those of many other advanced economies, and our society will have to adapt over time to an older workforce. Our K-12 educational system, despite considerable strengths, poorly serves a substantial portion of our population. The costs of health care in the United States are the highest in the world, without fully commensurate results in terms of health outcomes. But all of these long-term issues were well known before the crisis; efforts to address these problems have been ongoing, and these efforts will continue and, I hope, intensify."
"We continue to strongly recommend exposure to gold, not only as a consequence (of) the events of the past week, but also through next year, which reflects our conviction that heightened demand for safe-haven commodities will be sustained by lingering investor concern over sovereign debt and growth risks in the U.S. and Europe, all occurring amid historically low real interest rates," Morgan Stanley says.
Gold price hikes in 2010 ( 30%) was record-breaking. In the first half of 2011 gold price increased by 5.3%, in July - 8.5%. The decade of the gold price hike has become the most long-term at least since 1920.