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CC/09-22Tuesday 22 September 2026The Colored Gemstones Desk · Trade
TradeColored Gemstones · CC/09-22

Thailand's gold exports fall 59.22% in July to US$411.04m

Gem and jewellery exports excluding gold slipped 6.36% to US$737.93m, the first monthly fall after four straight gains. Seven-month exports excluding gold still run 9.87% ahead at US$8,981.12m.

By The Gemstone Desk22 September 2026Brief 25 sec · Full read 1 min
PLATE IKey figures
US$411.04mJuly gold exports
US$737.93mJuly gems, ex-gold
US$8,981.12mSeven months, ex-gold
US$18,055.79mSeven months, all goods
Source GIT monthly trade release, published 10 September 2026 · July 2026 Thai customs data
What changed

Gold stopped moving. Thai unwrought gold exports fell 59.22% in July to US$411.04m. Gem and jewellery exports excluding gold fell 6.36%, ending a run of monthly gains.

What it means · The Desk’s View

If you buy Thai colour: The stone trade slipped; the collapse is in bullion, not gems.

If you track Thai exports: Strip unwrought gold out. Including it, July reads down 39.21%; excluding it, down 6.36%.

What this is not: A gem-demand shock. Seven-month exports excluding gold remain 9.87% ahead.

The article3 sections · 120 words
Table I · Thailand's July, and the year to dateGIT release of 10 September 2026 (July) · GIT infocenter, 7 September 2026 (January–July)
MeasureJuly 2026ChangeJanuary–July 2026
Excluding unwrought goldUS$737.93m−6.36%US$8,981.12m (+9.87%)
Unwrought gold aloneUS$411.04m−59.22%US$9,074.68m (+19.06%)
Including goldUS$1,138.97m−39.21%US$18,055.79m (+14.30%)
The year rows reconcile, the July rows do not 18,055.79 − 8,981.12 = 9,074.67 against the release's 9,074.68, a one-cent rounding. But 737.93 + 411.04 = 1,148.97, which is US$10m above the 1,138.97 the release prints for July including gold. One of those three July figures is wrong by ten million dollars and the release does not say which. All three are printed as published none has been adjusted to force the column to add, and the gap is this desk's own arithmetic, noted in neither source document. Why two totals exist unwrought gold is bullion that clears Thai customs under the gem and jewellery heading, so GIT reports the trade with and without it.

IBullion drove the fall

Gold halved and more. Unwrought gold exports fell 59.22% in July to US$411.04m, against a seven-month total of US$9,074.68m that is still 19.06% ahead of last year.

GIT names the cause. The institute gives the reason as a slowing world gold price, which it describes as having eased for a fifth straight month, thinning speculative shipments.

IIGems fell far less

First fall in five. Exports excluding unwrought gold fell 6.36% to US$737.93m, the first monthly decline after four consecutive months of growth.

The year still leads. Across January to July, exports excluding gold reached US$8,981.12m, up 9.87% on the same period a year earlier.

IIIThe July figures do not add

A ten-million gap. US$737.93m plus US$411.04m is US$1,148.97m, against the US$1,138.97m the release prints for July including gold.

The year rows do. The seven-month figures reconcile to a cent, so the gap sits in the July row alone and neither document resolves it.

The depthMethod, sources, corrections · open what you need
01What would change this call+

A restated July. The whole of the arithmetic problem here sits in three figures from one monthly release; a corrected August release that revises any of them settles it.

02Why Thailand reports two export totals+

Unwrought gold is bullion in bar or ingot form, and in Thailand's trade accounts it clears customs under the same heading as gems and jewellery. Because bullion moves on price speculation rather than on jewellery demand, and because the sums involved can exceed the stone trade several times over in a single month, a total that includes it tracks the gold market rather than the gem market. GIT therefore publishes both, and the figure excluding unwrought gold is the one that describes what Thailand's cutters, polishers and jewellery manufacturers actually shipped. July is a clean illustration: including gold the month reads down 39.21%, excluding it down 6.36%.

03Method · the desk’s arithmetic+

The July figures in this article come from one document: the Manager Online report of GIT's monthly release, published 10 September 2026 at 14:20 and attributed to Sumet Prasongpongchai, the institute's director. Its Thai text was read from the page's raw bytes on 22 September 2026, not through a translation summariser, and carries US$737.93m excluding gold at −6.36%, US$1,138.97m including gold at −39.21%, and US$411.04m of unwrought gold at −59.22%. The January-to-July figures were separately confirmed at GIT's own infocenter article of 7 September 2026, whose text carries US$18,055.79m including gold at +14.30% and US$8,981.12m excluding gold at +9.87%; those two match the syndicated report exactly. GIT's own page does not carry a July-alone breakdown, so the monthly figures rest on the single report of the release and are labelled here as doing so rather than presented as confirmed at the institute. An earlier automated reading of the GIT page appeared to return July figures; re-reading the raw bytes showed the page contains no July-alone data, and that reading was discarded rather than printed. The US$10m reconciliation gap is this desk's own subtraction and is noted in neither document.

04Sources2 documents
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