Could bad data be depressing the gold price? Eric Sprott says GFMS stats are flawed
Sprott Securities founder Eric Sprott questioned those statistics in a call-out on his website. He figures that the demand for gold is actually 3,000 tons more than the annual supply, and therefore the gold price will soon be much higher. What is the true demand for gold? How much is really available in any given year? Does supply and demand really determine the price of gold anymore? The Gold Report called Sprott and John Gravelle, global and Canadian mining leader for PwC, which produced the report for the World Gold Council, to find out.
The Gold Report: Eric, you published an Open Letter to the World Gold Council saying that the massive imbalance between supply and demand is not reflected in prices because available statistics are misleading, and that is the most important obstacle to a healthy gold mining industry. Why has it been so difficult to get accurate statistics and what should be measured to get a better picture of demand, particularly in emerging markets?
Eric Sprott: I have always had a dispute with the data that Thomson Reuters GFMS Gold Survey puts out, which the World Gold Council uses as the basis for its analysis of gold. Since I've been involved in the gold market, the supply always magically equals the demand. Of course, we know that's almost impossible.