While an official figure for Guyana’s 2015 gold production is yet to be declared Stabroek Business has learnt that the final figure could be somewhere between 420,000 ounces and 450,000 ounces, a significant increase in the declared production figure of 387,000 ounces in 2014.
However, the Guyana Gold & Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) official who provided this information was quick to add that the significantly increased gold yield last year was a result of the commencement of mining operations by two major expatriate operations, Guyana Goldfields and Troy Resources. The Canadian company Guyana Goldfields commenced operations last year and was reportedly on track to mine between 30,000 ounces and 50,000 ounces of gold in 2015 and between 120,000 ounces and 150,000 ounces this year. Australia’s Troy Resources is expected to produce around 90,000 ounces of gold annually.
The disclosure regarding projected gold production for 2015 comes against what industry watchers have described as a particularly bad year for the industry. Observers point to what now appears to be proven instances of significant levels of smuggling of gold out of the country as well as a combination of management and corruption concerns in the sector and specifically within the industry’s
regulatory body, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC).
The GGDMA, meanwhile, has told this newspaper that falling gold prices has had a significant negative impact on gold mining, with production-related activity amongst local miners, falling off by an estimated 20 per cent. The association says that the saving grace for the sector at this time is the relatively low cost of fuel which represents around 60 per cent of the operating costs in the mining industry.
Ongoing dialogue between government and the mining sector also appears to have been moving at a snail’s pace with muted if persistent complaints emerging from the mining sector that the anticipated changing gears in the pace of dialogue between government and the industry in the wake of the change of political administration has not really occurred. Government, the association says, has linked the granting of some concessions to the mining sector to the tax compliance status of the miners and with some miners apparently being non-compliant, concessions are likely to come through in a trickle. “Frankly, we are not entirely convinced that government really wants to grant serious concessions to the sector,” one miner told this newspaper.
The GGDMA says, however, that it is pinning its hopes on promised government support for supporting the sector’s focus on significantly increased gold recovery this year to help compensate for weak world market prices. The association says that it anticipating some measure of official support with the acquisition of improved gold recovery technology though it did not provide details of the nature of the technology and the time line for its acquisition. Stabroek Business understands that the expatriate gold mining outfits currently operating in Guyana have also committed themselves to providing help with technology.
All of this, the GGDMA says, has to be buttressed by a stable and effective regulatory body, a circumstance which it says was decidedly not the case in 2015. The association pointed to what it said was the “mishandling” of issues inside the commission which it said resulted in controversy that shrouded both the chairman of the GGMC Board as well as its commissioner.
Improved gold recovery aside, the association says that following a disastrous year as far as mining sector safety was concerned it intended to focus on increased attention to safer mining practices in 2016. With more than a dozen fatalities resulting from mining accidents particularly in Region Eight during last year the association said that it recognized that safety training apart, there was a need to re-orient miners to the need to consider safe mining practices as an essential prerequisite to success in gold recovery.
