Importance of Physical Gold Holdings At The Hong Kong Airport
For many years, gold has been an element of great importance. It has been used for many purposes over the centuries. Gold is one of the oldest forms of currency, used by people for several years. Although it is no longer used as currency but its importance has not diminished.
Gold has been used as a financial asset and also as a store value. People used to and still believe in keeping gold as a financial asset with the belief that even in the period of economic crisis; gold would still hold some value. Thus, it would help them in the time of crisis. Gold has been bought in physical form, and it also has been traded for its price. For this reason, the central banks keep a certain amount of gold as reserves to help them during economic slump.
Hong Kong has emerged as an economic giant over the years. It has been growing as a business centre. It has physical gold reserves in London, which is considered a hub of metal trade. But, keeping the costs associated, and for capturing the Asian market, Hong Kong has built its own depository on its land.
On the 2nd of September 2009, Hong Kong unveiled its depository at the Hong Kong International Airport, which could be used for depositing precious metals. These depositories are used for storing precious metals like gold, platinum, silver and palladium. The depository has a dimension of 340 square meters.
Hong Kong would benefit a lot as a logistic and financial centre in the Asian market. This would greatly affect the western vaults by reducing their importance. But there would be many benefits for Hong Kong to reap from this depository. As the demand for gold and other precious metals is growing in Asia and in the country so this depository would benefit Hong Kong a lot.
One of major benefits is that the settlement risks and the transportation costs involved would be reduced. Along with providing physical storage, it would provide settlement services to the commodity exchanges, central banks, issuers of exchange traded funds, precious metal refineries and bullion banks.
The depository would help a great deal in benefiting from other booming economies in Asia like china. This has no doubt affected the importance of the western vaults. The Hong Kong monetary is equivalent to the central bank; it would also be shifting all its physical gold deposits to the depository gradually over this year.
Due to the increasing economic crisis the prices of gold is increasing a lot, therefore the opening of this depository is very well timed as it would give many benefits from this Asian region. For quite a lot of time London has been the centre of the bullion settlement and storage. This position of London would be greatly affected with the opening of this depository in Asia. The prospects of the benefits that this depository would offer are very high but time would reveal the true importance. The position of India as an important player in the gold market would also be affected from this depository in Hong Kong.
Jack Wagon is a gold investment consultant. You can take his help to buy gold bullion. For more information about buying gold you can visit his recommended site at http://www.goldmadesimple.com/