Demonetization may affect gold demand in short term: WGC

India’s demonetization decision is likely to affect gold demand in the short term, a World Gold Council (WGC) outlook report released on Friday stated.
“In India, the Government’s decision to remove large denomination rupee notes took around 86 per cent of India’s circulating cash out of its economy,” according to the Outlook 2017 – Global Economic Trends and their impact on gold, released by WGC.
“While the purpose is to replace them with newly printed notes, we believe that the liquidity squeeze could have a temporary negative effect on economic growth, and may also affect gold demand in the short term.
“But more importantly, we believe that the transition to transparency and formalisation of the economy will lead to stronger Indian growth in the longer term, thus benefiting gold,” the report added.
The WGC said there are six major trends to be watched out for in 2017 from economic perspective that would impact the gold market.
The trends are: Heightened political and geopolitical risks; currency depreciation; rising inflation expectations; inflated stock market valuations; long-term Asian growth and opening of new markets.
The report said gold is becoming more mainstream. Gold-backed exchange traded funds made gold accessible to millions of investors, primarily in the West, over the past decade, but other markets continue to expand too.”
It said, “China has seen dramatic growth in recent years through gold accumulation plans, physically settled gold contracts in the Shanghai Gold Exchange. In Japan, pension funds have increased their gold holdings over the past few years.”
In the corporate sector, more than 200 defined-benefit pension funds have invested in gold. In addition, more than 160 defined-contribution plans have added gold to their list of investments.
“We expect this trend to continue and expand into Western markets, where pension funds have had to rethink asset allocation strategies following prolonged exposure to low (and even negative) interest rates. In our view, this will result in structurally higher demand,” the report said.
“Innovation is evident across all markets, but at the end of last year one development stood out. The Accounting and Auditing Organisation of Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI), with support from the World Gold Council, launched the Shari’ah Standard for Gold, opening up the Muslim world to gold investment,” it added.