Dushanbe. June 22. “Asia-Plus” — While waiting for investor Tajik geologists continue mining works on Shahboz gold deposit in Penjikent region, Head of the Central Department of Geology under the Government of Tajikistan Azim Ibrohim told the AP.
He said that Shahboz is one of five deposits of Mosfir ore field with the total gold reserve of 75 tons. In the course of the government’s session on the issues of gold mining in the country, which was held in November 2009, Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon decided to put Shahboz deposit up for tender. Exploration works in the given area were launched in 1985 but have been suspended due to the civil confrontation in the country and were resumed in 2007. According to A.Ibrohim, reserves of Shahboz deposit have much more importance as compared to other four deposits. “Content of gold in ore taken from these deposits is very low but, of course, we can use modern technologies to process it,” he said.
“Experts paid attention to this deposit due to rise in price for one ounce of gold which now exceeds USD$1000. With such content of gold in ore as 3 grams in 1 ton, this deposit would hardly had any economic value with previous level of gold prices,” Ibrohim said.
Analysis of global tendencies of the development of gold mining for the past 25 years shows that there are tendencies for increase and decrease in gold production. Rapid growth in gold prices has affected gold production in many countries.
It has become economically profitable to explore poor and process hard-cleaning ores: resume exploitation of neglected and “suspended” deposits. Even though prices for gold have been falling down since 1996 and reached the lowest level for the past 20 years of USD$252,8 for troy ounce on July 20, 1999. But today the price for gold at the global market reached USD$1229,5 for ounce.
