São Paulo – On Wednesday (19), Sudan inaugurated its first gold refinery. Located in the city of Khartoum, the mill should produce 328 tonnes of metal a year. For 2012 alone, the country hopes revenues with the sales of the product to reach US$ 3 billion. The information was disclosed on the internet page of TV channel Al Jazeera, from Qatar.
According to Mohammad Kheir Al-Zubair, governor of the Central Bank of Sudan, over the last 16 months, gold sales from the country totalled 58 tonnes, for the value of US$ 2.6 billion. The new refinery has capacity for the processing of 900 kilograms of gold and 200 kilograms of silver per day.
According to Al Jazeera, the opening of the refinery is an attempt of the Sudanese government to improve the quality of its growing exports of the metal and also to recover losses caused with lower oil revenues, due to the separation from South Sudan, last year.
The site also informs that, despite the promising potential for production of gold in Sudan, it is difficult to confirm the total figures for extraction of the metal in the country, as the informality in the gold sector is very large there.
Most of the current gold production in Sudan comes from small companies and individuals attracted by the high prices for exploration of the precious metal in regions of the country that are distant from the capital. The government of Sudan estimates that 250,000 Sudanese are involved in extraction of gold, most in the North.
*Translated by Mark Ament
