Demand for gold on the global market declined to its lowest in six years in the second quarter of this year.
This is according to the World Gold Council.
[contextly_sidebar id=”LrVDNM7wY3cQdxsuVpMN1fAwgPVQMVPI”]The low demand has been attributed to mainly weakness in the Chinese and Indian markets as well as stock market turbulence.
Most central banks around the world also reduced their purchases of gold.
According to the council central bank purchases of gold fell by 13 percent.
Apart from the drop in demand for the precious metal, gold has seen its price continue to dip significantly on the world market.
Gold is one of two commodities government is yet to publically announce any move to review its revenue target for this year.
Finance minister Seth Tekper early this year was forced to reduce its revenue targets downwards from oil after prices of crude dropped on the world market.
Stakeholders had expected that government would review downwards its revenue target for cocoa and gold as well following the continuous drop in their prices on the global market.
The drop in the price of gold left Ghana with only 187 million dollars in revenue from the precious metal in March 2015 as against the 392 dollars recorded in August 2014.
The continuous drop in the price of gold on the global market has left not only government worried about its revenue targets but some mixed feeling among miners who fear a further reduction will hurt their profits and even reignite a possible layoff of workers in the industry.
Gold is currently going for a little over 1 thousand dollars an ounces as against the 1 thousand 6 hundred dollars figure it rallied around some years back.
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By: Vivian Kai Lokko/citifmonline.com/Ghana