The Oil Slump Is Emptying the Stores of Dubai

Gold Traders In The Dubai Gold Souk

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-29/city-of-gold-fading-as-oil-slump-drains-purses-of-dubai-shoppers

The Oil Slump Is Emptying the Stores of Dubai
by Eddie Van Der Walt
7:00 PM EDT
April 29, 2015

Gold Traders In The Dubai Gold Souk

Gold traders in the Dubai Gold Souk. Now, with crude almost half the price of a year ago, gold buyers are harder to find as Middle East demand for the metal slows and the city sees a drop-off in some visitors. Photographer: Duncan Chard/Bloomberg
Gold traders in the Dubai Gold Souk. Now, with crude almost half the price of a year ago, gold buyers are harder to find as Middle East demand for the metal slows and the city sees a drop-off in some visitors. Photographer: Duncan Chard/Bloomberg

The historic Dubai marketplace that calls itself the City of Gold is glittering less these days.

Under streets and alleys covered by roofs to protect window shoppers from the intense desert sun, more than 300 stores peddle everything from ingots to Bedouin jewelry. The Dubai Gold Souk had become one of the largest such marketplaces, offering tax-free precious metal, as Persian Gulf oil wealth ballooned in the past few decades.

Now, with the plunge in crude throttling economies across the Middle East, gold buyers are harder to find. Demand for the metal is slowing in the region and Dubai has seen a drop-off in some visitors. Shopkeepers say sales are declining because tourists from Saudi Arabia and Russia have less cash to spend. Sellers offer discounts for gold that two years ago fetched a premium.

“The market is dead,” Jeffrey Rhodes, who has spent 27 years in Dubai’s gold industry and founded Rhodes Precious Metals Consultancy DMCC, said by telephone on April 21. “There’s no real demand here.”

The city’s history in gold jewelry dates back to the Bedouin nomads that roamed the Arabian desert, and it has long been a center for trading the metal. Dubai is the second biggest of the United Arab Emirates and is situated on the Arabian Peninsula near the shipping routes out of the Gulf. It’s a bridge between Africa, home to some of the world’s richest mines, and the jewelry markets of India, whose citizens buy more gold than anyone else on the planet.

Even with fewer shoppers in the market, which rose to prominence in the 1940s and is spaced across two buildings as high as six floors, Dubai is still a major trading hub. The weight of all the gold jewelry on display comes to about 25 metric tons, the same as five Indian elephants, according to an association representing the vendors.

Lower oil prices and political turmoil across the Middle East and Russia are hurting tourism to Dubai. With Brent crude futures down 43 percent from a peak in June, oil revenue is slumping for the world’s largest producers. Russia is heading toward a recession and its currency has plunged, while Saudi Arabia is on track for the slowest economic growth since 2009.