GOLD TRADE
Rules on gold trade "aimed at consumer protection"
Sarun Kijvasin
The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The Fiscal Policy Office (FPO) yesterday said that the working group to oversee gold shops would be focusing on formulating rules to protect customers.

FPO director-general Somchai Sajjapong said that the office had set up a working group to study ways to oversee gold shops for consumer protection, with emphasis on saving retail gold buyers from fraud.

The working group is not aimed at preventing currency speculation.

"This working group was created after the Bank of Thailand wanted the FPO to find solutions over gold movement. We had one meeting," Somchai said.

Gold trade in the secondary market is overseen by supervision units, Thailand Futures Exchange (TFEX) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Somchai said that gold imports did not significantly affect exchange rates as high imports occurred only in some periods and the central bank was keeping an eye on them. He said the FPO had no intention of controlling gold imports.

"In the first meeting [of the working group], figures were shown. And irregular high figures happened only periodically. We know there was speculation in gold, but we have to see whether or not retail buyers were affected. This is our duty," Somchai said.

He said 23 investors were affected from online gold investment with combined losses of Bt300 million to Bt400 million.

About 7-8 investors have filed cases over credit default. The investors believe that gold companies' marketing staff followed their firms' policy of having their staff give orders to buy or sell gold for customers and that includes trade beyond the amount limit and call for more collateral when over-purchase is made without any notification in advance.

"Previously, affected investors lodged complaints with the Office of Consumer Protection. However, the office refused to accept them. They then went to the Department of Special Investigation, but the DSI told the investors not to do anything but wait for the situation to unfold. However, they are about to be proceed with the cases," Somchai said.


-- The Nation 2013-09-28

Watch the gold shops fight this as "consumer protection" means it would be easier for a customer to take regress against a gold shop for fraudulent sales gold such as under-karat gold, lead center gold bars, etc., even if the gold shop didn't know the gold was under-karat, etc.

The first story on this topic a few days ago was that it was all about stopping currency speculation and possible negative effects of balance of trade. Now they spun story round to one of "consumer protection" and it has nothing todo with what was first stated. Happens a lot in the Thai papers I notice. The news often opposite and conflicts itself day to day. I think its the politics of talk first think later , or skip the thinking but change story a bit on orders not really understood to counter negative reactions to the first story.

First root seems to be that some one top side didn't like the massive orders of gold on the price dips making the surplus/ balance of trade situation look shakey. Person X or T then mentioned to a minion that maybe they should look in to controlling the market- minion then relays this idea of controlling market to media with out really knowing what he's on about and it all gets a bit messy as interested parties start sounding off and the minion has to wiggle around some stories trying to clarify what he has no idea about with upsetting people.

So in short, this is a free market but when we are to lose we will apply restrictions so we can manipulate the price and our losses.

Nevertheless when gold is rising and we can't lose because we sell higher than we purchased, we will still manipulate the market, though less obvious, to maximize our profits.

That's what we call a win - win situation, unfortunately the other 99,9 % of the Thai population are as always in a lose - lose situation.

I bet they are used to it already.

The article appears to suggest that some gold companies have been trading without explicit authorisation with large-size customer assets and that where the trades went wrong the customer accounts had to pay up on the margin calls, which the customers then discovered to their cost. The government now looking into the grey area of what constitutes authorisation.