People used to wear gold teeth, they have become a thing of the past. We see them in music videos. But gold jewelry never went out of fashion. Once a straw house, today most real estate, it is one of the most common forms of investment in our area.
On the turbulent world geopolitical scene, one of the safest forms of investment is investment gold. Because of the Middle East, the price in the world broke the psychological limit.
Tutankhamun’s golden mask, made of pure gold, weighing 24 kilograms. The tombs of the pharaohs, all of gold. From Ancient Egypt until today, gold is a symbol of wealth. During wars and crises, the value of gold increases. Today, due to the conflict in the Middle East, the price of gold broke the psychological limit of 120 marks per gram on the world market. In the following period, a growth trend is expected, which is heading towards a record 2,000 US dollars per ounce. In our jewelry stores, at first glance, jewelry is the most visible. However, investment gold is bought the most.
“It is essentially the purest gold. They are like those bars of gold to you. They have the highest purity, unlike this 14-carat, 18-carat gold. The demand for investment gold is essentially due to investment of money but also due to gifts, because it is something that remains,” explains Vanja Plavšić, a worker in a jewelry store.
The price of 14-karat gold on our market per gram ranges from one hundred to 150 marks. As an investment, they say, it is much more expensive.
“In our country, a gram of investment gold costs from about 200 to 270 BAM, strictly what we have is 270 BAM,” Plavšić points out.
Jewelry with stones, especially wedding jewelry, has its regular customers as well as these gold bars.
“An investment gold bar of ten grams costs 2,700 BAM, five grams is 1,350 BAM, one gram is 270 BAM, and there is also a 50-gram bar that costs 13,500 BAM,” they say from this Banja Luka jewelry store.
In the European Union, gold is an important asset security instrument. It is equated with currency, i.e. money. There, the purchase and sale of investment gold is exempt from VAT. This is not the case in BIH. Those who have savings but not enough, for example, to buy real estate, can invest in investment gold.
“Buying monetary gold is something that people do because that way they remain sure that it will not lose its value. We have another problem with that purchase, and that is, when the market situation is stable – prices fall. So they don’t stay at that same level. There is a risk that you might lose it, but if you are going to keep it as a gold reserve, so to speak, then it makes sense to invest the money,” according to economic analyst Zoran Pavlović.
In neighboring Croatia, there are websites dealing with the sale of investment gold. While researching, we came across data that customers in BIH bring this gold to their feet, which, according to the instructions, they must first purchase in their regional branches. For citizens, this type of purchase is more profitable, but it also opens up the possibility of gray areas, say economists. According to current prices, a kilogram of gold on the world exchange is more than 64,000 USD, reports Una.
How many years would a resident of Bosnia and Herzegovina have to work with an average salary to buy a kilogram of gold?
With a simple calculation, it looked like this: 90 average salaries divided by 12 months in a year equals 7.5 years of work – Pavlović calculated.
If you receive an average salary of 1,285 marks per month, for a kilogram of gold that costs more than 115,000 BAM, you need 90 monthly salaries or 7.5 years of work, but while living off air.
