Gold bar
Photo by: Bloomberg
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Gold would sell at an average price of $1 170/oz during 2015 and rise to an average of $1 250/oz in 2016, the Gold Fields Mineral Services (GFMS) team at Thomson Reuters forecast on Thursday.
GFMS’s forty-ninth yearly gold survey found that the gold price had already bottomed in local currency terms but would fall further in dollar terms this year, before rising by year-end in an upward movement that would lead to gold averaging $1 250/oz in 2016.
“There are signs that confidence is starting to return,” the survey team commented.
Fourteen per cent higher 2014 official sector purchases, at 466 t net, the second highest since the end of the gold standard, underpinned a structural shift towards price stability.
The renewed eastward shift in physical gold demand would give the gold market fresh stability against the background of China and India collectively accounting for 54% of the world’s jewellery, bar and medal demand in 2014.
Mined 2014 output of 3 133 t was expected to remain flat in 2015.
All-in mining costs dropped by 25% to $1 314/oz compared with the year’s lower average spot price of $1 266/oz and total cash costs decreased by 3% to $749/oz, reflecting advantageous foreign exchange rate movements and higher processed grades.
Corporate activity in gold mining was 9% lower than in 2013 at $7.3-billion and hedging, at 103 t, was the highest since 1999.