MALI said a temporary administrator will restart production at Barrick Mining’s Loulo-Gounkoto gold complex, which was put under provisional administration earlier this month, according to a report by Bloomberg News on Thursday.
The newswire reported that a dispute between Mali’s military junta and the Canadian miner escalated on June 16 when a court in Bamako ruled the state could take over management of the mine for six months. Barrick shuttered Loulo-Gounkoto — one of its most important assets — after Malian authorities blocked bullion exports and detained senior employees.
“The situation cannot remain as it is, because we need to protect the workers, we need to protect the factories,” Mines Minister Amadou Keita said on state-owned broadcaster ORTM. The administrator — a former health minister — will “restart operations, produce, pay the workers’ wages, but also produce gold for the national economy,” he added.
The troubles began in 2023 when Mali’s cash-strapped military regime demanded foreign investors make payments for alleged back taxes and adhere to a new mining law granting the state higher royalties and bigger stakes in joint ventures. Owners of other gold mines in the country, including Allied Gold Corp. and B2Gold Corp., have reached settlements.
An audit of the industry “highlighted a number of shortcomings including the fact that mining companies were in the habit of depositing the revenue from the sale of gold in banks outside the country,” Keita said in rare public comments on the spat, according to Bloomberg News.
Barrick, one of the world’s biggest gold producers, has turned to international arbitration proceedings against Mali, seeking to declare that its subsidiaries possess binding conventions that aren’t subject to legal changes.
The company remains committed to negotiating a “mutually acceptable solution” with the government.
