The Sudanese Mineral Resources Company (SMRC), a state-owned company regulating the country’s gold sector, announced this week that it had achieved the highest gold production in the history of the mineral sector in Sudan during 2022.
The director of SMRC's General Administration for Supervision and Control of Production Companies, engineer Alaeldin Ali, said in a statement that the gold production for the past year amounted to 18.64 tons from the production of the organized sector, which includes concession companies and companies dealing with traditional mining waste.
Ali pointed out that the gold production in 2022 increased by 1.61 tons, in comparison with the highest production record of 17.26 tons achieved in 2019.
Sudan produces between 95–100 tons of gold annually, making the North African nation the third-biggest gold producer in Africa, only trailing behind Ghana and South Africa.
However, the gold sector in Sudan suffers from large-scale smuggling operations. The Sudanese authorities used to announce, every once in a while, seizures of smuggled gold in large quantities at border crossings, including at Khartoum International Airport.
The main reason for the rising smuggling activities is believed to be the presence of a non-organized mining sector, also known as the traditional mining, which is out of the Sudanese government’s control. The traditional mining sector is the most widespread, and it produces more than three quarters of Sudan’s annual overall gold production.