Consumption
The consumption of gold produced in the world is about 50% in jewelry, 40% in investments, and 10% in industry.
Most of the gold used in manufactured goods, jewelry, and works of art is eventually recovered and recycled. Some gold used in spacecraft and electronic equipment cannot be profitably recovered, but it is generally used in these applications in the form of extremely thin layers or extremely fine wires so that the total quantity used (and lost) is small compared to the total amount of gold produced and stockpiled. Thus there is little true consumption of new gold in the economic sense; the stock of gold remains essentially constant (at least in the modern world) while ownership shifts from one party to another. One estimate is that 85% of all the gold ever mined is still available in the world's easily recoverable stocks, with 15% having been lost, or used in non-recyclable industrial uses.
India is the world's largest single consumer of gold, as Indians buy about 25% of the world's gold, purchasing approximately 800 tonnes of gold every year, mostly for jewelry. India is also the largest importer of gold; in 2008, India imported around 400 tonnes of gold. Indian households hold 18,000 tonnes of gold which represents 11% of the global stock and worth more than $950 billion.
| Country | 2010 | 2009 | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| India | 745.70 | 442.37 | +69 |
| Greater China | 428.00 | 376.96 | +14 |
| United States | 128.61 | 150.28 | −14 |
| Turkey | 74.07 | 75.16 | −1 |
| Saudi Arabia | 72.95 | 77.75 | −6 |
| Russia | 67.50 | 60.12 | +12 |
| United Arab Emirates | 63.37 | 67.60 | −6 |
| Egypt | 53.43 | 56.68 | −6 |
| Indonesia | 32.75 | 41.00 | −20 |
| United Kingdom | 27.35 | 31.75 | −14 |
| Other Persian Gulf Countries | 21.97 | 24.10 | −10 |
| Japan | 18.50 | 21.85 | −15 |
| South Korea | 15.87 | 18.83 | −16 |
| Vietnam | 14.36 | 15.08 | −5 |
| Thailand | 6.28 | 7.33 | −14 |
| Total | 1805.60 | 1508.70 | +20 |
| Other Countries | 254.0 | 251.6 | +1 |
| World Total | 2059.6 | 1760.3 | +17 |
Read more about this topic: Gold Compounds
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