Sudan opens second biggest gold refinery in Africa

Sudanese President, Omar al Bashir Sudanese President, Omar al Bashir, inaugurated the second biggest Gold Refinery in Africa today. Its products are supposed to be internationally recognised after a year of its opening, due to the modernity and high quality that will be produced. The refinery's design production capacity is 900 kilograms a day of gold, silver and copper.
The Sudanese side was trained by experts from Italy and India, and all the international organisations that shared in the establishment of the refinery were honored during the opening ceremony.
Acting Director of the Refinery, Azhari Altayeb, said that the refinery’s capital is 100 million Sudanese pounds ($22.5milion) mainly contributed by Sudan's central bank and the rest is between the Minister of Finance and Sudamin Company.
He added “The refinery is going to be run in an environmentally friendly fashion.”
Azhari Altayeb said: “There are more objectives we seek to achieve. Among those obtaining pure gold, benefiting from other metals, and decreasing the pressure on the foreign currencies by producing ingots of gold equivalent to funds in free currency to be given to whoever is interested in treatment, medicine, tourism or any other purpose than international trade.”
He added “The expected benefits of the refinery are summarised in having a new production for the first time in Sudan by liquidating gold and manufacturing it. The refinery could also be a centre of the liquidation of raw gold to middle, east and west Africa which was sent to other countries, specially that the refining prices in the Sudanese gold refinery is competitive in comparison with the international prices. Necessary facilitations will be granted to make the entrance and exit procedures easier and within the international and local laws and regulations.”
Sudanese Minister of Minerals Kamal Abdul- Latif said when addressing the inauguration ceremony in Khartoum that his ministry will continue its efforts to benefit from Sudan’s resources in the mining field.
Governor of Sudan's central bank, Mohamed Khair Al-Zubair, said “the opening of the refinery is in the right time,” and that “the gold revenues from free currencies will contribute to solve many problems Sudan faced in the last period as there was an unprecedented rise in the free currency rates.”
The Sudanese Minister of Finance, Ali Mahmoud, said “The Sudanese resources are plenty and if used well we can overcome the country’s economical problems which increased after losing the oil revenues of the South after last year’s separation.”
The Minister added “Sudan was subject to the cruellest kinds of political and economic ‘siege’ and was deprived of getting facilitations for loans for the construction of Sudan which was plotted by some bodies. The government didn’t receive any financial loans from abroad for years.”
The minister went through the objectives of the three-year economic reform programme which was adopted by the government to face the consequences of losing oil - which was the first financial resource to its treasury - after the separation.”
He added “This year a sugar factory will open in the White Nile state, in the centre of the country, as well as some dams and reservoirs. It’s true that the economy has been facing challenges, but it didn’t deteriorate or collapse as some would claim.”
The Minister invited the investors to benefit from Sudan’s resources. He expects that the next period will see stability in the exchange rate and an increase in the local production.
The minister revealed that “Gold exports in the form of ingots will reach one ton weekly, with total revenues of $54 million per ton,” pointing out that “the country’s gold reserve is big.”