YANGON Gold Entrepreneurs Association (YGEA) warned gold traders to halt business unless they make transactions below the YGEA’s reference price, according to a notification released on 16 March.

Those unscrupulous dealers are manipulating the market by misleading information. Authorities are inspecting the cause of price fluctuations, and legal proceedings against them are underway.

As a result of this, the YGEA requested dealers to make gold transactions below the set reference price and avoid the spread of false news and price manipulation on 12 March.

The YGEA opened the reference price at K3.7945 million per tical (0.578 ounce or 0.016 kilogramme) on 16 March.

The pure gold price hit up to K4.16 million per tical in the unofficial market, with the spot gold price rallying US$2,150 per ounce and Kyat devaluation against the US dollar to K3,680 on 16 March.

The figures showed a gap of K360,000 per tical between the YGEA’s reference price and the actual market value.

Earlier, the YGEA calculated the price depending on the Central Bank of Myanmar’s interbank reference exchange rate, with some addition, in spite of the US dollar gain in the unofficial forex market, causing the price gap to widen to K400,000-K500,000 per tical.

Following the CBM’s liberalization for authorized dealers for online forex trading on 5 December 2023, the gap between the YGEA’s reference price and the actual market value narrowed.

The kyat-US dollar exchange rate soaring up to K4,000 drove the gold price up to a record high of K4 million per tical in late August 2023.

NN/EM

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