In fact, the Singapore government encourages investors and consumers to store their gold in Singapore. Singapore is also one of the jurisdictions where no tax on goods and services is imposed on the import of precious metals for commercial or personal use. In general, there are no taxes of any kind on ingots in Singapore. Importing precious investment metals (MPI) to Singapore for commercial or personal use is exempt from goods and services tax (GST).
For those looking to invest in gold, a Gold IRA rollover guide can provide helpful information on the process. This is another step for price discovery in the precious metals market to be related to the supply and demand of physical metal and not to the machinations of banks and hedge funds that manipulate the paper gold market in COMEX. The Bloomberg Link precious metals conference took place yesterday in New York and most participants were optimistic about gold. Another sign of Asia's growing importance in the global gold market is the news that Singapore plans to increase its share in the global gold trade sevenfold after eliminating taxes on gold, silver and platinum bars. Currently, only 2% of global demand for gold flows through Singapore and Singapore aims to increase it by 10 to 15% over the next five to 10 years, says Kathy Lai, Deputy Executive Director of IE Singapore.
Gold with a fineness of not less than 99.5%, silver with a fineness of not less than 99.9% and platinum with a fineness of not less than 99% are exempt from GST. Asia does not have a so-called gold center, where there is a critical mass of merchants and warehouses, such as in London and Zurich, Lai said. Despite continued caution with regard to gold in Western markets, mediocre purchases and, in fact, some sales, there are still strong purchases in the Asian store of wealth buyers.
