The refinery which was launched on Thursday will have a
production capacity of around 400 kilogrammes (880 pounds) of gold per day.
The CEO of the refinery’s co-managing company Marena Gold,
Ismael Siby made this known on Thursday.
Siby said the first 22-carat gold bars would leave the
refinery in 11 months, adding that the project would create 100 direct jobs and
5,000 indirect jobs.
“There’s no longer any question of us taking our gold abroad
for refining. We’ll refine it on-site because we know the real content of the
raw gold that comes out. That’s very important,” Burkina Faso’s military leader
Captain Ibrahim Traore said at a launch ceremony in the capital Ouagadougou.
“For some time now, gold has been (Burkina’s) leading export
product,” he added.
“But we have no control over gold… today we have decided to
put a whole network in place”.
The mining sector accounts for 14.3 per cent of Burkina’s
state revenue, according to data from the Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative (EITI).
But gold production in the country fell from 66.8 tonnes in
2021 to 57.6 tonnes in 2022 – marking a 13.7 per cent drop.
Traore added that “a lot of gold leaves Burkina
fraudulently, and this moreover helps to fuel terrorism”.
The country is battling a jihadist insurgency that spilled
over from neighbouring Mali in 2015 and has left more than 17,000 civilians and
soldiers dead and displaced two million people.
Violence led to the closure of four industrial mines and the
abandonment of nearly 700 gold-panning sites last year, according to official
figures. AFP
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