DUBAI: Dubai’s second-quarter gold imports fell 2.1 percent to 143 tons, compared with a year ago, and exports plummeted 15.8 percent to 64 tons, figures from the Dubai Multi Commodities Center (DMCC) showed yesterday.
The Gulf Arab emirate’s total gold imports for the first half of 2008 were down 4.7 percent, at 265 tons. Total exports during the same period rose 26.1 percent to 179 tons, according to figures in a DMCC statement.
Gold trade through Dubai reached $6.01 billion in the first quarter of the year, up 26.3 percent from the same period in 2007, while in the first half of the year, trade in the precious metal surged 48 percent to $13.07 billion from the same period a year earlier, the DMCC said.
“Demand for gold has been resilient to global market conditions,” Ian MacDonald, DMCC’s executive director for gold and precious metals, said in the statement. “The sharp rise in prices seen earlier this year has been a prime driver in improving export volumes, and has boosted the role of gold as an inflation-hedging instrument,” he said, in an apparent reference to the six-month performance
