Consumption
The consumption of gold produced in the world is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.
Most of the gold used in manufactured goods, jewelry, and works of art is eventually recovered and recycled. Some gold used in spacecraft and electronic equipment cannot be profitably recovered, but it is generally used in these applications in the form of extremely thin layers or extremely fine wires so that the total quantity used (and lost) is small compared to the total amount of gold produced and stockpiled. Thus there is little true consumption of new gold in the economic sense; the stock of gold remains essentially constant (at least in the modern world) while ownership shifts from one party to another. One estimate is that 85% of all the gold ever mined is still available in the world's easily recoverable stocks, with 15% having been lost, or used in non-recyclable industrial uses.
India is the world's largest single consumer of gold, as Indians buy about 25% of the world's gold, purchasing approximately 800 tonnes of gold every year, mostly for jewelry. India is also the largest importer of gold; in 2008, India imported around 400 tonnes of gold. Indian households hold 18,000 tonnes of gold which represents 11% of the global stock and worth more than $950 billion.
| Country | 2010 | 2009 | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | 745.70 | 442.37 | +69 |
| Greater China | 428.00 | 376.96 | +14 |
| United States | 128.61 | 150.28 | −14 |
| Turkey | 74.07 | 75.16 | −1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 72.95 | 77.75 | −6 |
| Russia | 67.50 | 60.12 | +12 |
| United Arab Emirates | 63.37 | 67.60 | −6 |
| Egypt | 53.43 | 56.68 | −6 |
| Indonesia | 32.75 | 41.00 | −20 |
| United Kingdom | 27.35 | 31.75 | −14 |
| Other Persian Gulf Countries | 21.97 | 24.10 | −10 |
| Japan | 18.50 | 21.85 | −15 |
| South Korea | 15.87 | 18.83 | −16 |
| Vietnam | 14.36 | 15.08 | −5 |
| Thailand | 6.28 | 7.33 | −14 |
| Total | 1805.60 | 1508.70 | +20 |
| Other Countries | 254.0 | 251.6 | +1 |
| World Total | 2059.6 | 1760.3 | +17 |
Read more about this topic: Gold Compounds
Famous quotes containing the word consumption:
“The Landlord is a gentleman ... who does not earn his wealth. He has a host of agents and clerks that receive for him. He does not even take the trouble to spend his wealth. He has a host of people around him to do the actual spending. He never sees it until he comes to enjoy it. His sole function, his chief pride, is the stately consumption of wealth produced by others.”
—David Lloyd George (1863–1945)
“The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.”
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929)
“I should like to suggest that at least on the face of it a stroke by stroke story of a copulation is exactly as absurd as a chew by chew account of the consumption of a chicken’s wing.”
—William Gass (b. 1924)