March 30 nears, but many speculators can’t sell their gold

With only two weeks remaining before all gold exchanges must shut down, many Vietnamese gold investors cannot close their accounts because they have not found buyers, reports VietNam Express.

Tran Thi Minh Yen’s happy that the Government decided to shut down the nation’s two dozen gold exchanges effective 30 March.  The long time Hanoi investor says “I have experience with gold investment and I know that managing gold exchanges in Vietnam is impossible. Investors are always at a disadvantage.”

On December 31, 2009, when the Government released the decision to shut down gold exchanges, Yen had had 100 taels of gold in her account at VGB Company.  “The market price was 25.5 dong per tael on January 19, but I entered an order to sell at 24 million dong per tael. Even with such a low price, I could only sell 20 taels,” Yen said, adding that she was advised to wait to sell the remaining volume of gold in the account.

After selling 20 taels of gold, which she had bought with a loan from Techcombank, Yen said, she had to pay principal and interest.  Now only 33 million dong was left in her cash account. That sum of money has become ‘thinner’ as the weeks passed because Yen still cannot sell the remaining 80 taels in the account.

“Every day I have to pay 500,000 dong in bank interest. Even if I can sell all the 80 taels of gold by March 30, I will be busted,” she complained.

Yen said that she phoned the brokers at VGB several times a day, urging them to help her sell gold, but she was told to wait, because her sell order had not yet found a buyer.

“At last, I decided to phone the head of the company,” she said. “I was told that VGB has transferred my case to Techcombank (its partner bank). Now I don’t know what to do!”

Tran Thanh Hai, General Director of VGB said that Yen is not the only investor who’s had trouble closing her account. “The orders to sell gold now cannot be matched because there are few purchase orders,” Hai said, adding that only one or two orders can be matched every day.

“By March 10, we had closed some 50 percent of clients’ accounts,” Hai said. “As for other investors, if their positions have not been liquidated by March 30, the company will pay investors for their gold in accordance with the international price.”

Some big gold exchanges are already shutting down.  Agribank’s AJC gold exchange will stop operation from March 16.  Meanwhile, Sacombanks SBJ gold exchange stopped operation prior to Tet.

VietNamNet/VNE

Tags: Vietnam gold market, Vietnam gold prices