Total export last year was only $197 mln
In the first month of this budget year 2020/21, Ethiopia secures over 72 million dollars from the export of gold, which is one third of the total earning the country secured in a full year in the last budget year.
In a press conference held on Tuesday August 18 Yinager Dessie, Governor of National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE), said that only in July, the first month of the 2020/21 budget year, the country secured USD 72 million from gold export.
He said that the government’s new approach is working to amass the gold from miners and control the illegal trade.
The amount secured in a single month is more than 36.5 percent of the total revenue secured in the full year of the last budget year.
In the 2019/20 budget year Ethiopia earned USD 197 million from gold export, which is 85 percent of the target. Moreover in the 2018/19 budget year only USD 27 million was earned from the precious metal export, which is the worst performance ever in the recent gold export history.
“We have undertaken massive study regarding the illegal trade on gold that led us to improve our price to buy the metal from miners mostly artisanal miners,” the Governor said.
“Due to policy change we managed to buy USD 60 million, USD 50 million and USD 72 million worth of gold in a single month in the past few months,” Yinager added.
In the past budget year the trend of the hard currency earnings from the precious metal returned back as one of the major hard currency sources for the country.
At the good time in 2011/12 budget year the country secured USD 420 million from gold export. Mostly the production of artisanal miners, who sold the metal to NBE that is responsible for export, is the major source for Ethiopian gold export.
Tigray, Benshangul Gumuz, Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Regional State and Oromia are the major areas for artisanal miners. Besides that new resource locations are found for the precious metal in the regions mentioned above and other regions like Afar.
Globally the price of gold has surged and surpasses USD 2,000 per ounce, which is unseen in the gold market history.
