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Opposition Leader calls for monitoring of gold sector as declarations fall
Kaieteur News – Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton on Thursday called for greater monitoring of the gold sector as the declarations continue to decline despite announcements of mega discoveries by foreign companies.
Opposition Leader, Aubrey Norton
Norton was at the time responding to a question from Kaieteur News during his weekly press conference when he explained, “I think unless we put the Gold Board in order, put the institutions responsible for monitoring and working with those industries (in place) then we would have the problems we have.”
He believes that the problem would continue to persist unless the government changes and leaders who are “genuinely interested in Guyana” are elected to office.
Just last week, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo announced that an investigation into the steep decline in gold declarations made to the Guyana Gold Board (GGB) over the past six years is underway, as authorities here believe the resources are being smuggled into neighbouring Brazil.
He explained, “I see a big thing about gold smuggling now too and its absolutely right…Kaieteur News has (reported) a drop in declarations of gold from 2017…it’s absolutely true that we have noticed, especially the last couple of years a significant deviation and the story coming out from Brazil now we realize it may be diverting (there).”
The former Head of State noted that the government was formerly of the view that gold from Venezuela was coming into Guyana to bypass the sanctions, then head North through a legal route. However, it has now realized that it is Guyana’s gold that is being smuggled into Brazil.
It was reported that the Brazilian Federal Police in Boa Vista, Roraima are investigating a Guyanese businessman, for allegedly laundering some US$16.5M in smuggled gold, through shell companies in Brazil.
According to the Brazilian Federal Police (Policia Federal), the investigation was launched on July 7, 2023.
Jagdeo said he believes that miners are engaged in this activity to avoid paying the five percent royalty owed to the State, along with the two percent final tax attached to the mining activities.
According to him, “That might be one of the reasons, so we, there is an ongoing investigation into that and we are gonna take tough measures against people because we are gonna track also those who are benefitting from concessions.”
The Vice President pointed out that medium scale miners operating in the mineral-rich acreages in the interior locations that benefit from concessions, granted by government, will face the consequences if they are found involved in the racket to export the country’s gold illegally.
Declining declarations
An analysis of available statistics, done by this newspaper, found that even with foreign gold companies announcing mega gold finds, declarations to the Guyana Gold Board have been declining since 2017.
According to the Bank of Guyana (BoG) Annual Report for 2022, the total gold declarations last year declined by 2.5 percent to 486,415 troy ounces (oz).
Meanwhile, in 2021 and 2020, declarations were 499,054 oz and 585,433 oz respectively.
In 2019, the gold sector had performed better with declarations amounting to 641,828 oz.
Further, for the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, notable decreases were recorded; a total of 712,706 oz, 653,753 oz, and 613,073 oz were recorded respectively.
Notably, in the first quarter of this year, the trend continued with the Bank of Guyana reporting a contraction of 5.3 percent in declarations when compared with same period last year. This publication understands that the declarations were approximately 110,000 ounces.
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