– to get help in boosting recovery rate
To address the issue of low gold production and declaration in the country, Government has been working assiduously to support small miners by improving their access to land and boosting their recovery rates.
Since 2016, gold production and declaration have seen a steady decline. For 2022, the declaration was 486,415 ounces; for 2021, it was 499,054 ounces; for 2020, it was 584,291 ounces; and for 2019, it was 634,905 ounces.
Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat, in a press conference on Wednesday, attributed these low figures to a variety of factors. For instance, he said, for the years 2020-2021, significant flooding had occurred in mining districts, severely impacting operations. In 2023 there was a prolonged drought, and this year mining districts are again being affected by flooding. In 2020, the issue was the Covid-19 pandemic.
Another contributor, he said, is that, for decades, small and medium-scale miners have been mining the same properties repeatedly. As such, he said, Government has been working with these miners to help them employ new methods and technology in their operations in order to increase the recovery rate, which would increase gold production and, of course, their profitability. Current recovery rate, he noted, is around 35-40%.
“We’re working with medium-scale miners to look at ways they can move away from alluvial (soil) and even go into hard rock and produce more,” Minister Bharrat told reporters.
Another way Government is hoping to improve production and declaration is by helping small miners get better access to land.
He noted, “Every single person that comes to the Ministry or the GGMC for land, they want land with gold; that’s the common thing. Unfortunately, we’re not in the position to tell you how many ounces of gold are there when we give you that land or that property; it calls for prospecting.”
In this regard, he said, US company Global Venture Consulting LLC would soon undertake mineral mapping in Guyana in order to provide an updated record of where mineral resources can be found.
“We will start with specific mining districts, especially the Mazaruni, Potaro, North West, Cuyuni mining districts. Those are the four main mining districts. We will focus on those four for now, because we have a larger amount of our small and medium-scale miners concentrated in those four mining districts…So this is a project that will help us to identify not only where our gold deposits are, but all minerals,” Minister Bharrat has noted.
Moreover, Minister Bharrat said that, over the last four years, three lotteries have been conducted from which over 550 small miners were able to own mineral properties.
“This year alone, in Bartica, 150 (small miners have been able to own mineral properties), in Mahdia, 200; that is 350 in 2024 alone,” he noted.
Aside from the lotteries, he added, small miners have also been issued mining lands through the normal processes, which takes to more than 700 the total number of small miners that have been beneficiaries.
Meanwhile, among the other issues affecting the gold sector are the shortage of workers and the apparent migration of medium-scale miners to other sectors, such as oil and gas and construction.
