The finacial times has the following report on Eritrea's Gold production...
The first commercial production is due to begin in the third quarter of next year when the Bisha mine opens on a site in western Eritrea that contains nearly 1m ounces of gold, said Alem Kibreab, director-general of mines at the Ministry of Energy and Mines.
Bisha is being developed by Nevsun Resources, a junior mining company listed in Toronto, which has a 60 per cent stake in the project. The remaining 40 per cent is held by Eritrea’s state-owned mining company. Beneath its layer of gold the site has about 700m pounds of copper and 1bn pounds of zinc.
The eight companies awarded new exploration licences this year include Andiamo Exploration and London Africa from the UK; South Boulder Mines from Australia; India’s Spice Metals & Minerals; and Zhongchang Mining of China. A total of 14 foreign companies are now in the country.
Eritrea is “highly prospective ground”, said Kevin Tomlinson, managing director of the mining practice at Thomas Weisel, an investment bank. “It’s in a very prolific geological corridor that runs from Egypt along the Red Sea, down through Sudan to Eritrea, and then to Somalia and the northern tip of Madagascar. That’s where a lot of the pharaohs’ gold came from,” he said.
Eritrea’s deposits are not likely to be larger than those in South Africa or the Democratic Republic of Congo, but income from royalties, taxes and new jobs could ease the government’s fiscal problems and spread more wealth among its 5m or so people, many of them living on the margins of survival. To read more click here.
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