The four Vietnamese banks that are selling gold from the State Bank’s reserves have mostly moved to selling gold online. This is off the back of huge lines to buy gold over the past couple of weeks disrupting regular business at said banks.
This move, however, may have inadvertently facilitated a spike in demand giving people who don’t have the time to wait in queues at banks a more efficient means to buy the relatively cheap gold on offer. Of note, Agribank reported that at one point there were 50,000 attempts to register to buy gold at one time through its online portal.
One reading of this is that even though the price is coming down, demand is far from being met. This could be problematic in that the State Bank’s supplies are finite and should it stop selling gold prices will likely jump back up. The next step, should closing the gap between world gold prices and domestic gold prices continue to be a priority, would then surely have to be importing more gold. That said, the search for innovative ways to avoid this appears to be ongoing, with the idea of taxing gold trading floated last week.