DOHA: Bullion traders reported brisk sale of gold yesterday even as the yellow metal's prices hit a record high in the local market at the close of business hours.
Pure or 24-carat gold was selling at an incredible QR161 per gram as the upward price curve inched up further due to global investors increasingly taking refuge in assets seen as safe--which gold always is.
Nepalese, Indians and Indonesians, particularly, made a beeline to buy pure gold for investment. "It's a good investment bet indeed in these days of uncertainties," said an
Indian buyer. He said he believed the prices would go up further so this was the best time to buy. "I would have bought earlier but waited for the prices to fall a bit. That never happened, though," he said not giving his name. "We have more Nepalese buyers of the precious metal," an official from Al Fardan Exchange which also deals in bullion, told this newspaper. "But the second largest buyers are Indians followed by Indonesians," the official added.
According to him, Nepalese buyers mostly prefer one and two-tola coins while the Indians, Indonesians and others went in for coins of various denominations in grams. One tola, a measure quite popular in South Asia, is a little more than 11 grammes.
As for the standard 116 gram gold biscuit which is quite popular with South Asians, its price reached a historic high of QR17,712 in the local market yesterday. It may be recalled that at the dawn of the current decade when many western countries were offloading their gold reserves, the prices of the yellow metal had taken a nosedive.
