The local gold market has suffered from a state of recession in terms of buy and sell movement during the past few years, because of a hike in the precious metal's prices. This is in addition to investors' reluctance to invest in gold, as they instead direct their investments to tools that are of lower risk. In this regard, Sara Mohamed, a recently engaged woman, said that she bought only two rings for her "shabka", (jewellery which a fiancé gives to his fiancée during an engagement ceremony) because of the unreasonable hike in gold prices. "My fiance set a certain budget we could not exceed," she revealed. In this respect, the popular 21 karat gold's price reached about EGP 632 per gram on Monday, compared to EGP 630 the week before, while 18 karat gold was at EGP 542, up from EGP 539 last week. While the surge in gold prices may encourage investors to direct their investments into it, Radwa Khaled, a fresh graduate, asserted that she will not invest money in gold, because of its high risk nature, indicating that world exchanges are not stable, in addition to changeable dollar prices. In this regard, "the last report released by the Stamp and Scales Authority exposed that about 15 tonnes of gold were stamped in 2017, compared to the annual stamping of 300 tonnes of gold, on average, during the 1990s, which reflects the gold industry's decline in Egypt," Rafiq Abbas, head of the gold section at the Chamber of Metal Industries of The Egyptian Union for Industry stated. Abbas asserted that prices of the precious metal rose in Egypt on Monday, on a surge in gold prices on world industrial metals exchanges. Furthermore, he clarified that exporting gold is the only means that can recover the local gold industry. "But, unfortunately, this was met with several obstacles from Ministry of Supply officials," he said.
