1 week Ago By Iylia Marsya Iskandar
KUALA LUMPUR: The surge in gold prices to historic highs is threatening the survival of goldsmiths and jewellers as they report shrinking sales.Malaysian Indian Goldsmith and Jewellers Association president Datuk Abdul Rasul Abdul Razak said if gold prices kept rising, the industry risks losing a significant number of domestic retail players."The industry had never expected gold prices to rise this high at this time," he said when contacted.
"Usually, the sales are 10 kilogrammes (kg) per month. Presently, the sales flow is at 6kg on domestic retail sales. We forecast it to go down to 4kg by 2027.
"If the price stabilises, we expect retail sales to improve and the savings on domestic jewellery will improve," he added.Rasul said domestic retail sellers had played a key role in driving volume and contributing to government revenue through taxes."Now what has happened is people who can afford to buy a small piece of jewellery are already going away because today, a small piece of jewellery is already above RM2,000, which affects the M40 and also the B40 people.
"This has already damaged the daily sales, income and volume of every domestic retail player."Now if this goes on, I think that we are going to lose a lot of domestic retail players," he said.However, he said the high prices had also drawn new investors, including youths, to use gold as a hedging asset.
"They are now already diverting themselves. Instead of having cash or having currencies or any type of other instrument, they are coming to gold. So this is what we can see now," he said.
He added that savings in the form of jewellery had also declined."If the situation goes on like this, by 2030, I think we can see a lot of loss on the savings," he said.Gold prices raced to an all-time high today, supported by recession concerns as escalating tariff tensions between the United States and China fuelled investor demand for safe-haven assets like the bullion.
Spot gold was up one per cent at US$3,205.53 an ounce. Bullion scaled to an all-time peak of US$3,217.
43 earlier in the session, and has gained more than five per cent for the week.US gold futures climbed 1.5 per cent to US$3,226.
50.(https://www.nst.
com.my/business/economy/2025/04/1200338/gold-prices-climb-historic-high-rm45562-gram)Meanwhile, Federation of Goldsmiths and Jewellers Association of Malaysia adviser Datuk Ng Yih Pyng said sales for gold jewellery had generally slowed down, and customers were buying slightly lighter items.However, to gauge the demand, he said they would need to monitor sales from the coming months onwards.
"This is because the first four months of this year were festive, with Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day and Hari Raya. Hence, we still see some demand for gold jewellery," he said.He added that businesses were seeing an increase in demand for 999 gold coins, wafers and bars.
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