By Shawn Blore - June 29, 2020
The Artisanal Gold Council made the New York Times on Friday in a Thomson Reuters story that highlighted two of the initiatives the AGC set in motion to help artisanal miners affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Published June 26 by Johannesburg-based mining correspondent Helen Reid and picked up by newspapers […]
By Shawn Blore - June 16, 2020
A June 11 article in the Australian Financial Review that incorrectly labelled artisanal gold from Papua New Guinea as conflict gold has caused the Perth Mint to temporarily suspend all purchases of ASM gold. According to a statement released in the name of the chair of Gold Corporation, Sam Walsh, […]
By Shawn Blore - June 16, 2020
A June 11 article by Angus Grigg in the Australian Financial Review is inaccurate when it claims that the Perth Mint is sourcing ‘conflict gold’ from artisanal miners in Papua New Guinea (PNG). The use of the term ‘conflict gold’ in connection with PNG is technically incorrect. The misuse of […]
By Shawn Blore - June 10, 2020
Gabon’s government gold buying agency, the CGCO, is currently faced with the comfortable challenge of exporting its stockpile of ASM gold, now more than 200kg and growing as gold from its ASGM sector continues to pour in. The flight restrictions and border closures implemented by Gabon authorities to fight the […]
By Shawn Blore - June 10, 2020
The travel restrictions imposed by Gabon to deal with the corona virus have inadvertently turned out to be a boon for the country’s government-run artisanal gold buying comptoir, now successfully buying ASM gold at 10 times its pre-Covid rate. A West African nation of some 2.1 million people, Gabon shut […]
By Erza Winanto - May 26, 2020
Repercussions from the COVID-19 pandemic have reached even the most isolated regions of the globe, among them the Artisanal Gold Council’s project in the Pudu Jaya WPR area in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The AGC project lies surrounded by palm forest about an hour’s journey from the nearest gold buying centre […]
By Adama Ouedraogo - May 21, 2020
Artisanal gold mining re-opened May 4, 2020. Field prices for gold, which had fallen to as low as 54% of spot, bounced back up to around 82% by May 6. This latest update, May 20, shows prices remaining steady in the low 80% range. Today in the field of […]
By Shawn Blore, Marieke Kroll, Kevin Telmer - May 14, 2020
Artisanal Gold Communities as Prime COVID-19 Intervention Targets: Supply Chain Reform, Health In Gold Even pre-COVID, the world’s more than 40 million artisanal miners earned a precarious living. Producers of diamonds and tin, tungsten and tantalum, cassiterite, cobalt, and an estimated 20% of the world’s new gold supply each year[1], […]
By Jacklyn Belo-Enricoso (National Gender Specialist, AGC Philippines) and Shyne S. Catedral (National Communication Assistant, AGC Philippines) - May 14, 2020
Women small-scale miners in the town of Itogon, Philippines, are facing various livelihood and economic challenges as a result of the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) that has been imposed due to COVID-19. Interviews with a few women miners showed that pre-COVID-19 gender inequalities are now exacerbated. Their concerns highlighted how, […]
By Shawn Blore - May 14, 2020
All of the world’s gold trading hubs have turned yellow (restricted but open) for the first time since the AGC created the Supply Chain Dashboard in mid-April. The Dashboard evaluates the trading status of the world’s six major gold trading hubs: Dubai, Switzerland, India, the UK, the USA and Hong […]
