On February 27th, the World Gold Council published their annual review for 2017. The strong performance of gold prices in 2017 is seen as a positive shift in the general market sentiment toward gold, a growing recognition of gold’s role as a wealth preservation and risk mitigation tool.

As usual, while the World Gold Council is not completely objective in their perspectives when it comes to the subject of gold and precious metals in general, the report is filled with interesting stats and diagrams.

Here, for instance, is an interesting diagram on annual gold demand in 2017.

Geographic centers of gold demand (Tons) in 2017

A comparison of 1987 vs 2016

,World Gold Council Annual Review, 2017