12/4/2023 0 Comments Gold rush cast 2013![]() ![]() Just 13 of them – those for which Reuters was able to obtain data – state they can handle more than 1,400 tonnes of gold a year, worth around $70 billion. ![]() With so many refineries competing for gold to process, each has scant incentive to check where its gold comes from. Governments of gold-producing countries in Africa have long complained that the precious metal in their rocks is being illegally produced and smuggled out on a vast scale, sometimes by criminal operations, often at a high human and environmental cost.īut because informal miners already often operate through smuggling networks to avoid tax and scrutiny, officials and industry sources say some refineries risk inevitably joining these shadowy channels. Officials in at least three more countries including Madagascar and Ivory Coast have publicly said they are interested in hosting a refinery. There, authorities granted 19 refining licences in the year to March 2019 - as many as in the previous three years combined.Įlsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa - where until 2012 there were only a handful of refineries - as many as 26 are now either operating or under construction across 14 countries from Mali to Tanzania, including in states which mine little gold at home, a Reuters survey of public reports found. Some of Africa's new gold refineries are in South Africa, a major gold producer with an already large refining industry. But if not properly controlled, they risk adding to problems of smuggling and funding conflict. ![]() The refineries, which often win high-level political backing, can be positive because they offer miners and states a way to extract value from their own mineral wealth rather than just exporting raw commodities. Small-scale mining is booming, and new gold refineries are opening by the dozen, to process metal produced by informal diggers in Africa and beyond. Alain Goetz, who set up the refinery, says that by branding gold from abroad as Ugandan, the operation is merely imitating others - for example, the Swiss don't mine the gold they refine in Switzerland.Ī pink building guarded by dogs at Entebbe on the shores of Lake Victoria, the refinery, African Gold Refinery (AGR), is part of a trend across Africa. ![]()
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