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Gold is known as the symbol of power since the industrial revolution and the development in global trade. People trade gold for different purposes and the gold prices hold a privileged place in the nature of the economy. In fact, you can envision how strong the economy is from the price of gold.
This precious metal tends to reflect changes in the value of the USD compared to other foreign currencies. When the currencies of other countries have declined against USD, the gold will be more expensive even though the gold prices stay flat in dollar terms. This causes a decrease in demand and puts pressure on gold prices, eventually pushing them down in dollar terms. Whereas; when the dollar decreases, the demand for gold increases pushing gold prices upwards.
The 75% of the gold production comes from 20 countries. According to World Gold Council, China is the biggest gold producer with a 14-15% and 21% together with the East Asia of the total market. South Africa and Latin America hold the 18%, North America 15%, Australia 8% with Russia and Uzbekistan 8%. Lastly, Europe and Middle east hold only 5% of the gold production. The table below shows the production percentage per country:
As the table above indicates, the gold production is fairly distributed between the continents and no country is dominant of one another. Adequately, the gold mining can be considered as a global industry.
China: Even though China does not have different ethnic groups as much as in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the potential gold consumption is tremendous. In 1994, international partnership in gold mining was legalized. Although, the gold consumption per capita is still 50% of India, 6% of Taiwan and 3% of Hong Kong.
Australia: Australia together with USA and South Africa is one of the biggest gold producers. The mining industry is a significant primary industry and contributor to the Australian economy and 80% is being exported. This rate makes 47% of the total export of goods of Australia. Additionally, there is about 3.8K mining businesses.
Russia: The mining and mineral sources put Russia in one of the leading positions in the world. Especially due to the availability of big petroleum and metal ores where gold ore reserves are also included.
South Africa: 90% of the country’s gold mining is supplied from a basin called Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
Due to international prices falling in the past 20 years have forced many mining reserves to shut down but luckily, the increase in the gold prices in the last few years has helped the mining reserves to re-open and function again.
Peru: As the 59th largest export economy in the world, they are holding on to their ‘’highest potential’’ label in Latin America. Gold mining is the primary source of exports and by 2014, it was over $13 billion, to export destinations such as China, USA, Switzerland, Canada and Brazil. This amount was made by only using the potential 4% of the mineral deposits.
Canada: Canada is one of the biggest producers of copper, cadmium, aluminium, salt, gold and cobalt. Mineral and non-mineral resources were the boosters of the Canadian economy. Except the Prince Edward island, the mining is active in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec and Northwest areas.
