Carat₹5,000 buys 0.294 grams of gold in Ahmedabad, and the counters are busy
Gold reached ₹1.7 lakh per 10 grams against ₹1.02 lakh at last year's festival, a rise of 66.7%. Silver reached ₹2.45 lakh a kilo against ₹1.17 lakh, up 109.4%.
§1A Gujarati trade fortnightly, with its own disclaimer attached.
Jewellers in Ahmedabad and Surat report Raksha Bandhan buying holding up at the highest gold and silver prices Indian counters have carried, on an account published 27 August by Diamond City, the Gujarati fortnightly that serves the Surat trade. Gold in Ahmedabad is put at ₹1.7 lakh per 10 grams against roughly ₹1.02 lakh at last year's festival. Silver is put at ₹2.45 lakh a kilogram against ₹1.17 lakh. The outlet carries its own disclaimer that the price comparisons were assembled by secondary research, and this desk labels them accordingly rather than treating them as exchange quotations.
§2One claim does not survive its own figures.
One claim in the account does not survive its own figures and is worth correcting here. The report says precious metal prices have more than doubled against last year. That is true of silver, which at ₹2.45 lakh against ₹1.17 lakh is up 109.40% on this desk's arithmetic. It is not true of gold, which at ₹1.7 lakh against ₹1.02 lakh is up 66.67%. The two metals moved very differently and the gap between them is most of what has changed at the counter.
Five thousand rupees now buys under a third of a gram.
§3Lighter weights, lower karat, grown stones.
What the buying has done is shrink. ₹1.7 lakh per 10 grams is ₹17,000 a gram, so the ₹5,000 budget-gift ceiling that jewellers report as the strongest band now buys 0.294 grams of gold.
The lightweight chains, rings and small pendants described as selling fastest run 1.5 to 2 grams, which is ₹25,500 to ₹34,000 in metal alone before making charges. Jigar Soni, president of the Jewellers Association of Ahmedabad, reports strongest demand in gold and silver rakhis, coins, crockery items and gift articles up to ₹5,000, with jewellery displacing traditional gifts.
The substitution underneath is the trade story. Retailers are moving stock into 9-carat and 14-carat gold and into lab-grown diamonds. Nine-carat is 37.5% gold against 22-carat's 91.67%, so a 9-carat piece carries 40.9% of the gold content of a 22-carat piece of the same weight, which is how a counter keeps a price point when the metal has risen two-thirds in a year. Param Begani, a director of a lab-grown diamond jewellery company, attributes the category's popularity among younger buyers to gold prices and to grown stones offering the look at an affordable budget. The jeweller Ashish Zaveri credits a recent partial correction in gold and silver for some of the improvement, and describes younger buyers taking 9-carat while purity-minded customers stay at 22.
This is not resilient demand at high prices, it is the same rupees buying less gold and being counted as the same festival. Every detail in the account points one way, toward lighter weights, lower karat and grown stones, and a trade that sells 0.294 grams where it used to sell half a gram is holding its ticket and losing its tonnage.
The number nobody has published is volume in grams, and until someone does, a busy counter and a shrinking one look identical from the street.
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