Silver Bullion in Singapore

Singapore is one of the best jurisdictions in the world for buying silver bullion. Both silver coins and silver bars are exempted from GST in Singapore.

For physical silver bars the criteria is that the silver bar has to be produced by an LBMA-approved refinery and be of a minimum purity of 99.9% silver.

For silver coins, there’s a list of silver coins exempted from GST published by the Singaporean tax authority, IRAS.

When you buy silver bullion in Singapore you should thus make sure that you buy either a silver bar that is produced by an LBMA-approved refinery or a silver coin included on the below list.

The following silver bullion coins are exempted from GST in Singapore:

Canadian Silver Maple
American Silver Eagle
Austrian Silver Philharmonics
Australian Silver Kookaburra
Australian Silver Koala
Australian Silver Lunar Series
Chinese Silver Panda
Mexican Silver Libertad
Silver Britannia

Why Buy Silver?

One of the most common questions we get here at BullionStar is whether to buy gold or buy silver. It’s a difficult question to answer but we will go through some of the fundamentals for buying silver bullion in this article.

The silver price has been dropping the last couple of years. The price of silver has been dropping even more than the price of gold. This means that the gold/silver price ratio is currently at 76 which is a very high level historically.

Industrial demand make up as much as 56% of the demand for silver according to the Silver Institute. This is in contrast to gold where a large majority of the demand is originating from investment or jewelry demand. The silver price is therefore more correlated to, and dependent on, general economic factors.

You can read much more about the most important fundamentals of silver bullion in this article.

Is it better to buy Silver Bars or Silver Coins?

When buying silver bullion you have to consider whether silver bars or silver coins is your best option. The choice depends on your personal preferences. There are a few differences consider.

Price premiums for silver are generally higher than price premiums for gold. Silver bars generally have a slightly lower price premium than silver coins. This means that the price per troy ounce or gram is lower for silver bars than for silver coins. It can thus be argued that you get more silver for your money with silver bars.

Albeit a slightly higher price premium, a good case can however be made for choosing silver coins. Most minted silver coins are weighing 1 troy ounce i.e. 31.1 grams and comes packaged in mint tubes of 20 or 25 coins which in turn are packaged in so called monster boxes of 500 coins. In case there’s a meltdown in the monetary system and silver returns as money, it may be better to sit on plenty of small 1 oz silver coins than a few large silver bars. With 1 oz silver coins you can easily sell or barter a small portion of your silver holdings. If you choose to buy Canadian Silver Maples, the most sold silver coin in the world currently, you get a coin recognised around the world. The Silver Maple together with other popular silver coins like the Silver Eagle and the Silver Philharmonic are all highly liquid silver investment coins.

Silver Storage

There’s many different ways of storing silver bullion. With the high gold/silver price ratio, the main difference to storing gold is that silver bullion is bulky and takes space. If you live in a secure area and have a safe and a safe house, it may be convenient to store your silver bullion at home.

BullionStar however offers a superior solution for silver bullion storage. With us, you can store securely in our vault with us as your vault storage provider. You can control your silver 24/7 online through BullionStar’s online solution, My Vault Storage. If you want to sell your silver or withdraw your silver, you can do so in a matter of seconds from the online interface. With BullionStar’s storage solution, you can also physically audit or physically withdraw your silver at any time without any prior notification.

Another alternative is to store your silver bullion in a safe deposit box with a bank. When you store silver in a safe deposit box, the bank isn’t formally allowed to confiscate or encumber your silver. Do however consider what could happen in case of a bank run if the bank simply closes its doors with an angry crowd outside. Will you be able to take possession of your silver?