First gold bar produced from new mine

Fifteen years after the discovery of a goldfield in western Niger, the country has produced its first gold bar and is looking forward to turning bullion exports into a new source of foreign exchange income. The first 15-kg gold bar from the Samira mine near the western frontier with Burkina Faso was cast on Tuesday in the presence of President Mamadou Tandja and other dignatories. “The mine will produce an average of 5,000 ounces of gold per year for six and a half years, giving a total of three tonnes," Oumarou Massalabi, the Director of Mines at the Ministry for Mines and Energy told IRIN on Friday. “This will result in about 15 billion CFA francs (US$ 28 million) of export earnings,” he added. Niger is a desperately poor country which has a gross domestic product of just US$190 per capita and derives a meagre foreign exchange income from exports of cotton and uranium. The landlocked West African country is the world's third largest producer of uranium, which is used to power nuclear power stations. The new gold mine at Samira is worked by the Société des Mines du Liptako (SML), which is 80 percent owned by two Canadian mining firms. The government of Niger has a 20 percent stake in the company. Massalabi said it would create 140 new jobs directly and 220 more indirectly in associated businesses such as electricity generation and security services. Individual prospectors have been panning for alluvial gold in the area for the past 20 years, but the state has had little control over their activities which have generated very little revenue for government coffers. However, last year the government encouraged gold traders in Niger to declare their earnings by reducing export taxes to five percent and the scheme has met with modest success. “So far this year, 412 kg of gold exports have been officially registered, providing 2.8 billion CFA ($5.2 million) of export earnings, out of which the State got CFA 30 million ($600,000),” Massalabi said. “We are still far from South Africa, Ghana, Mali or Guinea, but we hope that the opening of this first industrial mine will give a big boost to gold production in the country”. Last month, the government signed gold prospecting agreements with three other Canadian companies which will look for further commercial reserves in the same area.