Every Friday, SAfm’s radio anchor Sakina Kamwendo speaks to Martin Creamer, publishing editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly. Reported here is this Friday’s At the Coalface transcript:

Kamwendo: The gold price is expected to stay strong in 2026 because of widespread world uncertainty.

Creamer: That’s right. There is just so much disruptive world politics. There is disruptive world economics. Finances are disrupted and there are social drawbacks. So, just everything is hitting the world at the moment and when these sort of things happen, people seek refuge in gold. We can see it is not just ordinary citizens, but it is also reserve banks throughout the world.

They are making sure that they have got enough gold, because people are losing confidence in currencies. They need to make sure that they are going to have enough finance to back themselves and also, they are expecting some horrible, possibly hostile economics coming out of the reports that are still being delayed in the United States, because they had that furlough in the United States where they couldn't agree on the budgets. So, there has been a delay and a lot of analysts are fearing hostile reports there, which could send the gold price up again.

Kamwendo:  Global demand for platinum jewellery is continuing to remain very robust.

Creamer: Normally when the platinum price goes up, the jewellery sales in platinum fall and when the platinum price goes down, that is when people rush to get some good platinum jewellery. Now, we’ve witnessed the price of platinum going up and the demand for platinum jewellery continuing to be very strong. Good demand in China, good demand in Japan, good demand in India and many found that ironic in a high-price environment.

But, it is because the gold price is even higher than the platinum price, so people, instead of buying gold jewellery at that very high price, they are choosing to buy platinum jewellery, which has many physical attractions in that is great for South Africa, because we are the biggest producers of platinum and the Platinum Guild International, which we fund, had very good reports coming through. The only place where there was some disruption was in the United States because of the tariffs that have been imposed.

Kamwendo: South Africa must ensure that it makes the best of the metals windfall that is bringing in a lot of money.

Creamer: We have got this high metal price windfall. What do we do with it? It's very fortuitous. The analysts are reporting that the banks are going to get more, money coming in from metals is going to broaden economy, help the retail sector, help the property sector. The mines themselves are benefitting the inflow of money is going to support the introduction of lower interest rates, which gets people to buy.

So, I think the government should also respond by cutting red tape to allow more investment and to allow South Africa to have more access to energy, because we know that our sun energy and our wind energy is actually the cheapest energy we can produce in South Africa right now. The conventional way of producing energy is no longer the cheapest way, but the renewables route is the way to go. So, there are a lot of avenues to make sure we good use is made of this very fortuitous metals price windfall, which is so beneficial for the country,

Kamwendo: Thanks very much. Martin Creamer is publishing, editor of Engineering News & Mining Weekly.