Gold Silver Worlds: China just released their latest gold import figures for the month of July. China imported through Hong Kong 116.4 tonnes of physical gold in July of 2013. That figure comes on top of the 517.92 tonnes of gold imports in the first 6 months of this year. In total, between January and July of this year, China imported a staggering 633.94 tonnes of physical gold. The country is indeed on its way to reach 1,000 tonnes of imports over the whole year, as forecasted by the World Gold Council in their Q2 gold demand report.

To put this figure into perspective: the largest gold fund available to Western investors (the GLD) today is backing it’s paper with 919 tonnes of physical gold. GLD is by far the largest gold ETF. China on its own has imported 2/3d of that in the first 7 months of this year.

The chart below shows how July saw the second largest gold imports in a single month since the start of this bull market (and probably in history). There is a reason why we are spending so much attention on these figures.

In addition, Bloomberg noted that “Net imports, after deducting flows from China into Hong Kong, were 113 metric tons, from 101 tons a month earlier, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Mainland buyers purchased 129 tons in July, including scrap, compared with 113 tons in June, data from the Hong Kong government showed today.”

The chart is courtesy of Sharelynx.

This article is brought to you courtesy of Gold Silver Worlds, who advocates to own physical gold and silver outside the banking system.