DUBAI (Commodity Online): Turkey is doing the rescue act for Dubai’s bullion trade now. With sales dwindling for the past  few months, Dubai’s gold market was in a spot when a seasonal demand from Turkey came as a godsend for the Dubai jewellers.

Traders in Dubai call this a seasonal demand and say it has emerged as a result of local festivals and arrival of tourists in Turkey during the hot and humid months of July, August and September.

It is a custom in Turkey to gift gold in family functions and that has helped traders in Dubai maintain gold exports even as they battled a dwindling number of tourists coming to Dubai. To add to it, Turkey typically sees an inflow of tourists from the Middle East and Europe in the summer months.

Dubai, being the closest located exporter of gold to Turkey, has been able to use this demand to its advantage.

Celebrations that include events to mark the birth of children have helped several Dubai-based traders continue with exports in otherwise slow summer months.

Even though the demand for gold globally has subsided, in Turkey the demand for the yellow metal has gone up.

Surprisingly demand for the yellow metal is not high in Australia which is experiencing winters now as the country is more or less self-reliant on gold.

The World Gold Council (WGC), which tracks the demand of gold in different countries, said the demand for gold drops worldwide in summers while it picks up in Turkey.

Turkey, the fourth largest consumer of gold in the world, imported 20.8 tonnes of gold in 2007, up 20 per cent from the previous year.

A study by London-based precious metals analyst GFMS said both gold import and export from Turkey have been rising though they took a dip in 2008.

Dubai-based traders pointed out that export of not only bullion bars but even gold jewellery to Turkey has picked up in the past few months.

Turkey has also fast emerged as an exporter of jewellery and much of the jewellery seen on the shelves of Dubai’s jewellery stores is from Turkey.

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