Latest update December 17th, 2024 3:32 AM
El Dorado Trading now number one private gold dealer
Gold dealer/mining executive, Tamesh Jagmohan
The 2017 figures are in, and El Dorado Trading has emerged as the country’s number one gold dealer.
Last year, the gold-dealing company, which has remained in the top three exporters for the last six or seven years, made a declaration of 122,000 ounces, propelling it to the top of the game.
Contacted yesterday, Tamesh Jagmohan, executive of the gold trading/mining company, disclosed that in excess of US$160M was generated from his entity’s declarations.
“All of which was remitted back to our local banking system helping to stabilize our exchange rate. In excess of $2B in royalties and taxes have been remitted to the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Guyana Revenue Authority over the past year alone from our company,” the businessman disclosed.
This, the mining executive said, has been creating significant jobs not only in the city, but on the Essequibo coast, Bartica in Region Seven, and a number of outlying regions where gold mining is taking place.
According to Jagmohan, the good showing could not be done without the Government and other stakeholders.
“I would like to express gratitude to not only the Government, but our bankers, who continue to display confidence in the industry. We could not have also done it without our hardworking miners and the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association.”
El Dorado has five locations across the country.
“As you know Guyana has introduced stringent regulations to combat money laundering. We at El Dorado Trading have a full compliance team in place, who are working along with our customers – the miners and other stakeholders – to ensure that they are above board. So the past year has been a good one in this regard.”
As a result of last year’s performance, El Dorado managed to improve by 38 percent on its declarations and is ambitiously projecting a 150,000 ounces mark for this year.
The last year has been a relatively good one for the Guyana Gold Board.
Foreign currency earnings from gold last year once again topped the US$800M mark despite lower declarations. The figure of US$817M was slightly down from US$830M the previous year.
Declarations as at December 31, 2017 were 652,876 ounces compared to the 712,706 ounces from the previous year. That meant that despite almost 60,000 ounces less, the industry only managed to fall short by about US$13M.
The drop of declarations would be because of poor weather and roads, and what miners claim to be a delay in the granting of concessions, including fuel rebates.
The Gold Board also managed last year to slash its deficit of $18.9B to $5.4B – an improvement of 71 percent. The state entity had been racking up billions of dollars in losses following the fall in gold prices in the 2012 period. It was left holding stocks that it paid high prices for.
As a result, that deficit to Bank of Guyana had ballooned up to almost $19B.
At the end of 2016, in addition to the Guyana Gold Board, there were nine companies licensed to deal in gold.
One company, SSS Minerals Trading Inc., has since lost its licence because of questionable activities. It is under investigation.
Right up under El Dorado would be Mohamed’s Trading, a Lombard Street-headquartered operation, which has over the years been taking the number one spot. That company for the last six years consecutively has been the company with the largest export volumes for gold.
Mohamed’s declared over 151,000 ounces in 2016.
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