A CLAMP down on gold smuggling helped Sudan double gold output in the first half of 2021, said Bloomberg News citing a Sudanese Mineral Resources Company representative.
The North African nation recorded production of 30.3 tons between January and the end of June, compared with 15.6 tons in the same period the year before, Al-Sadig Al-Haj, head of planning and research at the state-owned company told the newswire service.
Sudan pocketed about 38.2 billion pounds ($86m) from gold in the first half of 2021 and targets 104 billion pounds from a total of 100 tons by the end of the year, al-Haj said. He attributed the rise to “strong measures” imposed by the mineral ministry and other state institutions to prevent illicit cross-border trade.
Gold smuggling and illegal mining of the metal are rampant throughout Africa.
According to a report by Reuters in March, Metalor – one of the world’s largest gold refiners – developed technology that would enable it to better identify metal that had been illegally mined.
The technology takes a sample of gold from a mine or supplier and creates a complex chemical and physical blueprint against which subsequent shipments can be checked, said the newswire citing the refiner’s executive, Jonathan Jodry.
Gold worth billions of dollars is smuggled out of Africa annually through the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to a 2019 Reuters report.
Citing customs data, Reuters said the UAE imported $15.1bn in gold from Africa in 2016, but a large portion of that gold supply was not recorded in the exports of African states. “There is a lot of gold leaving Africa without being captured in our records,” Frank Mugyenyi, a senior adviser on industrial development at the African Union told Reuters.
“UAE is cashing in on the unregulated environment in Africa,” he said.
