Egypt bans gold exports, miner says not affected

Mon Feb 28, 2011 6:06am GMT
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt on Sunday banned the export of gold for the next four months, a measure bankers said seemed aimed at preventing businessmen and former government officials who acquired capital illegally from transferring it abroad.
An official from a gold mine in Egypt said he was confident it was not aimed at gold production but at individual exports.
A decree banning the export of gold in all its forms, including jewelry and ornaments, was issued by newly appointed Trade Minister Samir el-Sayyad. It takes effect immediately and continues until June 30, the official news agency MENA reported.
"This decision, which comes in light of the exceptional circumstances the country is passing through ..., is to preserve the country's wealth until the situation stabilises," MENA said.
The MENA statement made no mention of whether the ban included exports of gold from mining. But an official from the flagship Sukari gold mine of Centamin Egypt said he was confident the order did not affect the mine's operation.
"For Centamin this is not a problem ... I know 100 percent that this is not a problem for us," said Youssef el-Raghy, managing director for the Sukari gold mine, adding that the ruling appeared aimed at individuals taking gold out of Egypt not producers of gold like Centamin.
The Egyptian pound has come under pressure after some of the country's main sources of foreign currency, including tourism and foreign investment, collapsed after the protests that ousted President Hosni Mubarak erupted on January 25.
But bankers said the decision on gold exports seemed designed more to stop individuals from expatriating funds under the radar than to stem major capital outflows.
"It is most likely aimed at the big guys -- the top officials and businessmen who are under suspicion," said John Sfakianakis, a Riyadh-based economist with Bank Saudi Fransi. "They are blocking capital flight in a new asset class."
A banker in Cairo also said it seemed aimed at former officials or executives trying to smuggle gold or wealth out of the country.


http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE71R01L20110228

Galactic Gold: A Valentine Story

Ever wonder where the gold in your wedding ring came from? This Valentine's Day, we ask Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of New York City's Hayden Planetarium, to explain the history of the rare element.

In the Beginning
According to Tyson, author of Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandries, all gold on Earth started out in the center of a star; he says stars are "in the business of cosmic alchemy."
When the universe began, there were only two kinds of atoms: hydrogen, which has one proton, and helium, which has two protons.
The problem was that hydrogen and helium couldn't combine to make a new kind of atom of three, four or five protons. The two atoms resisted each other because they were the same charge.
Unless, of course, it got very, very hot. How much heat would it take to get two protons to sit together?
About 10 million degrees, Tyson says. And that's where stars come in.
Fiery Fusion
Stars like our sun are so hot that protons collide with such force and have no choice but to combine. It's called fusion. Inside the sun's furnace, protons turn into heavier and heavier atoms: Hydrogen atoms combine to become helium, and then those helium atoms combine to become carbon.
"It keeps going," Tyson says. "Carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and silicon, and [fusion] just plows its way up the periodic table of elements."
Carbon has six protons, nitrogen seven protons, oxygen eight protons. A hot star can cook all the way up to iron, a 26-proton atom. But that's where it stops.
"When you reach iron, nobody can do anything… It's dead matter. You can't fusion it. You can't fission i"," Tyson explains.
Once a star has converted all its atoms into iron, it's out of fuel.
"That's a bad day for the star," Tyson says. "And at that moment, the entire star collapses, and in that collapse, the star reaches stratospheric temperatures and blows its guts to smithereens."
The Collapsing Star
A collapsing star is called a supernova. The explosion is so powerful and cataclysmic that you can see it across the universe.
Supernovae outshine whole galaxies, because the atoms inside are colliding furiously, creating intense heat — hundreds of millions of degrees.
Only in a supernova is it possible to create atoms with 30 protons, 40 protons, 50 protons or even 60 protons. Nature prefers even numbers for stability, but every so often, the star will forge an odd-numbered atom, a real rarity: gold!
Gold is a rare, odd-numbered atom with 79 protons. For every single gold atom in the universe, there are 1 million iron atoms, Tyson says.
A Long Journey
After the explosion, those few gold atoms are cast deep into the universe where they sit in empty space for eons. Eventually, some of the atoms may join a cloud. That cloud may condense into a planet.
Once inside a planet, some of the atoms may make it near the surface where we can come and dig them up.
So every atom of gold in your wedding ring was forged in a collapsing star, and then traveled across the universe to get to your finger. All the gold we wear and all the gold we give has made this same journey.
So how many miles and how many years are represented in a ring?
Calculating the path from several supernovae around our galaxy back to our solar system, Tyson concludes, all told, it's a journey of 3 million light years.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7397200

China gold demand growing at "explosive" pace: ICBC

Wed Feb 16(Reuters) - Demand in China for physical gold and gold-related investments is growing at an "explosive" pace and its appetite for the yellow metal is poised to remain robust amid inflation concerns, said an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) executive.

ICBC (1398.HK)(601398.SS), the world's largest bank by market value, sold about 7 tonnes of physical gold in January this year, nearly half the 15 tonnes of bullion sold in the whole of 2010, said Zhou Ming, deputy head of the bank's precious metals department on Wednesday.
"We are seeing explosive demand for gold. As Chinese get wealthy, they look to diversify their investments and gold stands out as a good hedge against inflation," Zhou told Reuters.
"There is also frantic demand for non-physical gold investments. We issued 1 billion yuan worth of gold-price-linked term deposits in 2010, but we managed to sell the same amount over just a few days in January this year," Zhou said, adding that such deposits would easily exceed 5 billion yuan ($759 million) this year.
Gold imports into China soared in 2010, turning the country, already the largest bullion miner, into a major overseas buyer for the first time.
The surge, which comes as Chinese investors look for insurance against rising inflation and currency appreciation, puts the country on track to overtake India as the world's top gold consumer and a significant force in global gold prices.
Gold prices jumped 30 percent in 2010 and struck an all-time high of $1430.95. Spot silver surged 83 percent last year and is currently hovering at around $30 per ounce.
Zhou said China's gold demand could grow at a stronger pace this year compared with 2010, as a choppy stock market and moves by Beijing to rein in property speculation and purchases means more investors will pile their cash in bullion investments.
"Unlike the property market, investment in the gold sector is something the government is encouraging," he said.
Beijing has encouraged retail consumption and announced last August measures to promote and regulate the local gold market, including expanding the number of banks allowed to import bullion.
"China has a centuries-long cultural attraction to gold and because we have started at such a low base, I think demand growth will likely stay strong for quite some time," he said.
Zhou said there was also voracious demand for silver, with the bank selling about 13 tonnes of physical silver in January alone, compared with 33 tonnes in the whole of 2010.
The scale of China's gold demand, which has increased on average at a double-digit clip over the past decade, has caught the market by surprise. Data showed China imported 209 tonnes of gold the first 10 months of last year, versus 333 tonnes by India for the whole year.
The bank on Tuesday launched its second physical gold investment product, which sells gold bars to investors, which can be resold for cash through ICBC based on real-time gold prices.
The WGC said ICBC's introduction of this gold investment could lift China's gold retail investment by 10 to 15 percent in 2011 from about 170 tonnes last year.
 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/us-icbc-gold-idUSTRE71F1MO20110216