The president of Guinea, Mamadi Doumbouya, has decreed the suspension of raw gold exports with the intention of favoring the treatment of the metal within the country and thus strengthening the Guinean economy.
The announcement was made at a meeting held with industrial and artisanal gold producers, as well as with the purchasing offices operating in this West African nation.
"Guinea possesses the second largest gold reserves in West Africa, but its gold leaves the country daily in raw form to be processed, certified, and sold elsewhere," Doumbouya declared during the meeting, broadcast by the state-owned Radio Télévision Guinéenne.
"From today, I put an end to this practice: Guinea will require its gold to be processed within its borders. Raw gold will no longer leave Guinea," he added.
Guinea, a major world producer of bauxite, also has significant gold deposits exploited by industrial companies such as Société Aurifère de Guinée, a subsidiary of AngloGold Ashanti, by two semi-industrial firms, and by hundreds of artisanal miners, as Bloomberg recalls.
According to data from the Ministry of Mines and Geology, joint gold exports from all these operators reached 22,142 kilograms in the first quarter of the year. The country ranks as the sixth largest gold producer on the African continent, according to the World Gold Council.
Doumbouya indicated that gold will only be able to be sold abroad once refined into ingots at a recently constructed plant in Conakry, the capital. "Guinean gold will be melted, certified, and processed in Guinea before being exported to international markets," he declared.
"Any operator who continues to export raw gold will have their license suspended and their mining contract terminated," he warned.