South African gold production still falling

From Mineweb: The latest gold output figures from South Africa's Chamber of Mines, covering the second quarter of the year show that the country's gold production is up on the first quarter, but that does not give a true picture as seasonality means that the country's Q2 gold production is invariably higher than that of Q1. What is the real significance is year on year performance and on this measure what used to be by far the world's largest gold producer is continuing to slip down the production table.

Q2 gold output this year was 1,589,678 ounces - although up a seemingly positive 12% on Q1 production of a little over 1.412 million ounces - was still down on last year's 1,622,932 ounces by around 2%. And the picture for the full half year to end-June is rather worse with the country's gold output falling from 3,234,265 ounces to 3,001,988 ounces, a year on year decline of a little over 7%.

This is, of course not only significant from a global production point of view, but very relevant to South Africa itself where gold has been an extremely important contributor to export earnings - although the impact will have been mitigated by the rise in the gold price, but not helped by the strong Rand. Gold has already been overtaken by platinum as the country's top export earner but still accounted for around US$6.6 billion last year.....read on