Africa-Press. The central bank in Madagascar has announced the upcoming opening of gold collection centers in four regions with significant potential for gold production. This initiative aims to increase the country’s gold reserves and regulate a sector that has seen extensive activity from smuggling networks.
The collection centers will be established in the cities of Ambilobe and Maevatanana in the north, Miandrivazo in the west, and Mananjary in the southeast of the island. The central bank intends to purchase gold directly from local producers.
Currently, the central bank holds about one ton of gold in its reserves and seeks to increase its holdings of this precious metal, aligning with a growing trend among central banks worldwide to enhance their gold reserves and diversify their foreign currency holdings.
Authorities hope that this initiative will support the stability of the local currency, the ariary, which has been experiencing significant fluctuations, as well as improve the state’s ability to monitor the gold sector and enhance its economic benefits.
Through the new collection centers, the central bank aims to enhance the traceability of gold, monitor its quality, and improve the working conditions of artisanal miners, particularly by reducing the use of mercury in the extraction processes.
The initiative also targets the organization of a sector that provides job opportunities for approximately 600,000 people, according to estimates from the central bank, most of whom work in the informal sector. Additionally, it aims to reduce gold smuggling operations that deprive the state of significant tax revenues.
The importance of this step is underscored by the expanding scale of illegal trade in the precious metal; only 13 kilograms of gold have been sold to foreign buyers through the single export window, the country’s legal trading platform, in recent times. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Mines had estimated the volume of smuggled gold to be around one ton per month by 2024.
Authorities in Madagascar hope that the new collection centers will serve as a tool to control the gold trade and channel a larger portion of its production into official channels, thereby enhancing state reserves and limiting losses resulting from smuggling and the informal economy.
