Assessment to strengthen gold mining sector to begin next week -President Ali – Guyana Chronicle

A FULL assessment of gold mining activities is set to take place on January 5, signalling potential policy changes in the country’s mining sector, President Dr Irfaan Ali has announced.
Speaking during an interview with journalists and students on Tuesday, the Head of State said the assessment is expected to examine compliance, operational practices, and the flow of gold sales, particularly focusing on traders and miners who sell outside the state-run gold board.
“So, on the 5th of January, there will be a complete assessment of every single miner and every single trader, and strong decisions will be made. We want them to be selling to the gold board, but all of these incentives have kept production going.”
He stressed that stringent actions will be taken.
“We are going to link the mercury they buy with their declarations; if they have land that they are working on (and) they have dredges registered, but there is no declaration, we’re going to repossess those lands because there is no sense in them destroying the environment and it’s not being used.’
Last month, President Ali had said that his government would pursue and shut down delinquent operators who continue to exploit state incentives while failing to declare their gold.
According to the Ministry of Finance’s mid-year report, gold declaration is up by 10.9 percent this year, but Dr Ali stressed that this remains below the government’s expectations.
He had emphasised then that miners who profit from the sector have a legal responsibility to accurately declare their gold, reminding them that this duty is “not by choice, but by law.”
The President added that the government intends to overhaul systems that have enabled chronic under-declaration and illegal exports, stating that the state must stop facilitating “those kinds of people.”

One gold smuggler alone, he noted, stole more than $190 billion from the Guyanese economy.