RBM on look-out for gold markets

By The Daily Times Last updated May 28, 2022

In an interview, RBM spokesperson Ralph Tseka said the central bank is currently sourcing quotations from a number of gold processing plants including in Zimbabwe and South Africa and that, when the time is ripe, information will be shared with people. As a matter of fact, we cannot get quotations from Zimbabwe alone; there are also gold processing plants in South…

By Chimwemwe Mangazi

The Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM) has indicated that it is still weighing options on where to send the country’s gold for processing into gold bars.

“We are going to give proper feedback on how much [gold] we have accumulated. We are still in the process of getting the gold refined but we can’t just send gold to the processors; we send requests and we get quotations. As a matter of fact, we cannot get quotations from Zimbabwe alone; there are also gold processing plants in South Africa and elsewhere. We weigh the costs and when everything is in place we will proceed,” Tseka said.

In an earlier interview, Tseka said the central bank was looking at securing 100 kilogrammes (kg) of gold before beginning processing of the commodity this month. At that time, the central bank had bought 89 kg of gold.

Currently the RBM buys alluvial gold at between K40,000 and K48,000 per gram.

Meanwhile, prices of the commodity have been fluctuating in recent months, dropping to $59,398.58 as at May 26 2022 from $61,593.44 on April 25,2022 according to https://goldprice.org/.

Gold is one of the commodities in the mining sector expected to boost the country’s import cover after sale.

According to RBM’s monthly economic review for March, total economy foreign exchange reserves stood at $766.0 million, representing 3.1 months of imports from $792.6 million, representing 3.2 months of imports recorded in the preceding month.