By ANDREW CLEARY
Chairman of Durban Roodepoort Deep (DRD), Roger Kebble,
predicted on Tuesday that the gold price would come off
its lows in the future but said that nothing was certain
and in the meantime DRD would "keep its head down" and
"ensure that [it] stays in business".
Kebble said that he believed some sort of conspiracy to
be in place, possibly involving hedging organisations.
He said that DRD had felt "an enormous thrust from the
hedging organisations to get us to give them our gold . . .
their passion for this could be so that they protect
themselves from a gold price increase".
However, Kebble said that he saw positive factors
emerging for gold, such as the probable blocking by US
congress of IMF gold sales. "Eventually I think we
might win this battle," he said.
DRD hedges most of its gold so that it is not as
badly affected by the lower prices. At current prices,
or "in this current onslaught", as chief executive
Mike Prinsloo put it, DRD could continue to operate
at hedged prices for a further 18 months.
However, the hedging programme could be rolled
forward by a period of up to five years in the
event of an improvement in the gold price,
allowing DRD to take advantage of the higher
prices, he said.
Prinsloo said that his own research into sentiment for
the gold price had shown an average forecast of $272/oz
in 2000 and $285/oz in 2001. The rand/dollar exchange
rate, he said, was forecast at R6.25 and R6.35 per
dollar in 2000 and 2001 respectively.
However, Kebble said he felt that the rand would
finish the year at a level of over R7/dollar. He
also called for government to lower interest rates
into single-digit territory to kickstart the economy
and allow the rand to weaken to "give this country an
opportunity to be export driven". |
