InfoAnda - Gold fever sweeps South Sudan ahead of new mining law |

Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case
Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They

Taiwan denies boycotting Australian film festival
Thursday, August 6, 2009

AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e

Merkel's support dips, regional ally resigns International
Thursday, September 3, 2009

By Sarah Marsh and Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German

Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who

Asian markets mixed after Wall Street rally
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an

Special Report: Europe's other crisis | | 22 June 2011
China: Labradors sniff for drugs after planes land | 14 January 2009
India new govt will focus on growth, help poor | 5 June 2009

'Slumdog Millionaire' hits Golden Globes jackpot | 12 January 2009

Forum Views () Forum Replies ()

Read more with google mobile : Gold fever sweeps South Sudan ahead of new mining law |

Edition: U.S. Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Home Business Business Home Economy Technology Media Small Business Legal Deals Earnings Social Pulse Business Video The Freeland File Aerospace & Defense Investing Simplified Markets Markets Home U.S. Markets European Markets Asian Markets Global Market Data Indices M&A Stocks Bonds Currencies Commodities Futures Funds peHUB Dividends World World Home U.S. Brazil China Euro Zone Japan Mexico Russia India Insight World Video Reuters Investigates Decoder Politics Politics Home Election 2012 Campaign Polling Supreme Court Politics Video Tech Technology Home MediaFile Science Tech Video Tech Tonic Social Pulse Opinion Opinion Home Chrystia Freeland John Lloyd Felix Salmon Jack Shafer David Rohde Nader Mousavizadeh Lucy P. Marcus Nicholas Wapshott Bethany McLean Anatole Kaletsky Edward Hadas Hugo Dixon Ian Bremmer Lawrence Summers Susan Glasser The Great Debate Steven Brill Reihan Salam Frederick Kempe Christopher Papagianis Mark Leonard Breakingviews Equities Credit Private Equity M&A Macro & Markets Politics Breakingviews Video Money Money Home Tax Break Lipper Awards 2012 Global Investing MuniLand Unstructured Finance Linda Stern Mark Miller John Wasik James Saft Analyst Research Alerts Watchlist Portfolio Stock Screener Fund Screener Personal Finance Video Money Clip Investing 201 Life Health Sports Arts Faithworld Business Traveler Entertainment Oddly Enough Lifestyle Video Pictures Pictures Home Reuters Photographers Full Focus Video Reuters TV Reuters News Article Comments (0) Slideshow Full Focus Editor's Choice Our best photos from the last 24 hours. Slideshow Download our Wider Image iPad app Images of October Follow Reuters Facebook Twitter RSS YouTube Read After Obama win, U.S. backs new U.N. arms treaty talks 07 Nov 2012 Iran issues warning after targeting U.S. drone 8:05am EST Boehner: "Obamacare is law of the land" 1:52am EST Obama plans "fiscal cliff" statement as showdown looms 10:50am EST "Dancing" co-host Brooke Burke has thyroid cancer 08 Nov 2012 Discussed 181 After Obama win, U.S. backs new U.N. arms treaty talks 169 White House race goes down to the wire 86 Obama win shows demographic shifts working against Republicans Sponsored Links Gold fever sweeps South Sudan ahead of new mining law Tweet Share this Email Print Related News Insight: Great expectations fill Greenland as China eyes riches Mon, Nov 5 2012 South Africa gold workers to return after bonus spat Fri, Nov 2 2012 Gold retreats below $1,720/oz, U.S. jobs data eyed Thu, Nov 1 2012 Gold to snap 4-month winning run; U.S. data, election eyed Wed, Oct 31 2012 South Africa police fire rubber bullets at striking miners Tue, Oct 30 2012 Analysis & Opinion Ethiopia and Eritrea: An elusive peace on the cards? Cynthia Carroll’s departure won’t fix Anglo Related Topics World » 1 of 24. A Toposa girl pans for gold in the Singaita River in Namorinyang, South Sudan October 24, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Adriane Ohanesian By Hereward Holland NANAKANAK, South Sudan | Fri Nov 9, 2012 8:48am EST NANAKANAK, South Sudan (Reuters) - Taking a break from the toil of digging, Leer Likuam sat on the edge of a shallow trench, puffed his pipe and boasted he once found a 200-gram gold nugget bigger than his thumb. In Nanakanak, a village of stick huts in an area that has attracted hundreds of diggers since Sudan's civil war ended in 2005, Likuam's find would have been lucrative but unexceptional. "Everything is luck," he said through a translator. On an average day he might dig up six grams, worth around 1,200 South Sudanese pounds ($270), he said. "Some days you're lucky." Word of Nanakanak's riches has spread. In the capital Juba, international mining firms are lining up at South Sudan's ministry of petroleum and mining, aiming to get their hands on part of the vast, unexplored territory. Officials say firms from China, Australia, the United States, South Africa and other African countries plan to apply for licenses when new mining laws are passed later this month. After many delays, parliament is set to begin debate on the bill on Monday. The South voted to secede from Sudan, then Africa's sixth-largest exporter of oil, in a referendum last year. The new nation inherited three-quarters of the united country's oil production, but in January a row with Khartoum led it to shut down the industry whose receipts gave South Sudan 98 percent of its income. The sudden loss of funds prompted Juba to introduce severe austerity measures, centralize and expand tax collection and explore fresh sources of revenue to replace petrodollars. Oil production is expected to restart in the next couple of weeks, reaching around 230,000 bpd by the end of the month, but in the meantime the government hopes to pass mining legislation that will formalize the industry, let them tax precious metal and mineral exports and sell concessions to large-scale investors. "It will diversify the economy. The mining sector has great potential," Petroleum and Mining Minister Stephen Dhieu Dau told Reuters. VIRGIN TERRITORY On the international market, Likuam's prize lump would fetch $11,000, an enormous sum in a country where the average teacher earns just 360 South Sudanese pounds, about $90, per month. Likuam isn't the only man with the golden touch. Around him dozens of other Toposa tribesmen and women, festooned with plastic necklaces, brass piercings and beaded amulets, hack away at the red soil with metal poles and shovels, digging small craters in a boozy revelry. Despite the morning hour, girls distribute crates of lager, "sarko" moonshine and pitchers of bitter-smelling beer brewed from sorghum. Many of the miners claim to have found nuggets of a rival size, or even larger. Nobody knows the extent of South Sudan's mineral reserves because the 22-year war prevented exploration. The latest geological surveys date back to the 1970s and 80s, but mining officials say diamond and gold deposits in South Sudan's mineral-rich neighbors are encouraging. They describe the 16-month-old country as virgin territory. "We are neighbors to the DR Congo and Central African Republic so we can't rule anything out. Geology doesn't know borders," said James Kundu, acting director general for geological surveying at the ministry. As well as gold and diamonds, he lists potential deposits of chromite, copper, uranium, manganese and a belt of iron ore, which is often associated with aluminum. A lot of records were lost in the war. One report by a Belgian company was half-eaten by termites, Kundu said. "There's a lot of stuff here but people don't know about it. They're too focused on oil," said one international gold trader who preferred not to be named in connection with the as-yet unregulated trade. "It's the best stuff I've seen in central Africa," he said, explaining that the samples he's tested show a purity of over 22 carats (91.6 percent gold) compared to around 18 carats in the Central African Republic. COW BANKING Locally, artisanal miners like Likuam are making their fortune, investing much of the money in the traditional method of storing wealth - cattle. In the last year alone, Likuam has bought 10 cows, each worth around 1,000 pounds. In another nearby artisanal mining spot called Napotpot, Julia Lakalay panned the red earth with water she had carried two km (one mile). "The gold mining has completely changed my life," she said, swathed in colored beads and spattered with mud. "In my village I could not even earn 1 pound. Now I'm earning 200 pounds per day." Merchants in Kapoeta, a local town of tin-shack pubs, dirt roads and scampering goats, say the price of gold is inflated by the scarcity of dollars, a problem across the country since the oil shutdown. In the absence of banks or an official exchange rate between the pound and the Kenyan shilling, Kapoeta's economy relies on gold as a form of cross-border currency. "The main purpose to buy gold is to change currency. We buy gold, take it to Kenya, sell it to dealers, and buy more stock to bring back," said Kenyan businessman Junius Njeru, weighing a pile of gold nuggets. "It's in your pocket, nobody searches you," he said, describing the process of taking the gold across the border. Miners sell the gold for around 200 pounds ($46) per gram, leaving traders a narrow profit margin for resale on the international market at $55. "BIG POTENTIAL" Officials hope the new mining law will bring this trade out of the black market and, by selling land to prospecting companies, eventually let the national and state governments benefit from the underground treasure. The mining companies with 42 so-called "grandfather" exploration permits approved by the semi-autonomous southern government before independence will have two weeks to claim their licenses after the bill passes through parliament, which could take as little as one day. Norway, the United States and Botswana helped draft the law that caps large-scale exploration licenses at 2,500 square km. To prevent exploration companies from sitting on the land, the law forces them to surrender 50 percent of their concession every time they renew their contracts, which will be variable. Firms that find enough minerals to start digging can convert their license into a mining permit. "If you put them in a queue, there's at least 20 meters of investors waiting to get a license ... Others must know that if they want something, they must come quickly," said Rainer Hengstmann, a ministry adviser working for consultant firm Adam Smith International. However, in a landlocked country with just 300 km of paved road, Hengstmann cautioned it will take many years to get commercial mining off the ground. "You need a railway if you want to go large-scale. It will take time. They really need roads and power," he told Reuters, echoing investors' complaints about the lack of infrastructure. Ministry officials say two firms, New Kush and Consolidated Mineral and Energy Resources Investment Company (CMERIC), are exploring actively on their grandfather licenses. But Equator Gold, a British company working on the CMERIC license, says it will still take several years to actually produce anything. "I think there's going to be a big rush to get land but exploration takes a long time," said Emma Parker, the firm's chief operations officer. "The progress has been slow but the geology is interesting. There's big potential." (Editing by Alexander Dziadosz and Sonya Hepinstall) World Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/ Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above. Edition: U.S. Arabic Argentina Brazil Canada China France Germany India Italy Japan Latin America Mexico Russia Spain United Kingdom Back to top Reuters.com Business Markets World Politics Technology Opinion Money Pictures Videos Site Index Legal Bankruptcy Law California Legal New York Legal Securities Law Support & Contact Support Corrections Connect with Reuters Twitter Facebook LinkedIn RSS Podcast Newsletters Mobile About Privacy Policy Terms of Use AdChoices Copyright Our Flagship financial information platform incorporating Reuters Insider An ultra-low latency infrastructure for electronic trading and data distribution A connected approach to governance, risk and compliance Our next generation legal research platform Our global tax workstation Thomsonreuters.com About Thomson Reuters Investor Relations Careers Contact Us Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.

Other News on Friday, 9 November 2012
Iran warplanes fired on U.S. drone over Gulf: Pentagon |
Public pressure in Libya mounts for security reform: U.N. |
Netanyahu phones Obama, pledges cooperation |
Blogger may have been tortured to death in Iran jail: Amnesty |
EU bids to keep Britain engaged in budget debate |
Guatemala scours for survivors, death toll expected to rise |
In Syria, siege is test for new rebel order |
Iran's Ahmadinejad says anyone stockpiling atom bombs retarded |
Intel, HP tout newest Itanium server technology |
Twitter mistakenly resets passwords of large number of users |
Amazon unveils wine marketplace in some U.S. states |
VP Joe Biden guest stars as celebrity crush on Parks and Rec |
Twilight fans camp out days ahead of Breaking Dawn-Part 2 |
Lagerfeld says Ghesquiere with Arnault not bad idea |
Iran fired on U.S. drone over Gulf: Pentagon |
South Korea finds cracks in control rod tunnels at nuclear plant |
UK campaigners call for Nobel Prize for shot Pakistani girl |
Obama to make landmark visit to Myanmar this month |
Earthquake hits northern Japan, no tsunami warning issued |
Netanyahu, on phone with Obama, pledges cooperation |
Sweeping Mexico energy reform may stumble in Congress |
Palestinians prepare U.N. upgrade despite U.S., Israel warnings |
China struggles to impress its young with red TV propaganda |
Seven Navy SEALS reprimanded for actions linked to videogame |
Icahn says has considered Netflix takeover, no decision made |
China Unicom expects to start selling iPhone 5 by year-end |
Dancing co-host Brooke Burke has thyroid cancer |
Twilight fans camp out days ahead of Breaking Dawn-Part 2 |
Still photos from Hitchcock's Mountain Eagle film up for auction |
Call me JackSUN, says singer Jermaine |
About 9,000 refugees, 26 officers flee Syria to Turkey |
Russia's Putin fires top general after graft scandal |
Chinese state firms say reform should mean more growth |
Court in Georgia keeps ex-minister in custody |
Iran, U.N. nuclear agency plan December talks |
Mexico charges 14 federal police over attack on U.S. officers |
Gutted Uganda reiterates Somalia withdrawal threat |
Chavez to Obama: forget global wars, fix domestic woes |
Gold fever sweeps South Sudan ahead of new mining law |
China Electronics says delays cooperation with Sharp due to islands row |
Moody's cuts Sony rating to one notch above junk |
Frankfurt gears up for Gangnam Style at MTV awards |
Twilight fans camp out days ahead of Breaking Dawn-Part 2 |
Andy Summers film documents surviving the Police |
Greece at new risk of being pushed off euro
Bodies of missing Tenn. mom, Jo Ann Bain, and daughter found
Female Breasts Are Bigger Than Ever
AMD Trinity Accelerated Processing Units Now in Volume Production
The Avengers (2012 film), made the second biggest opening- and single-day gross of all-time
AMD to Start Production of piledriver
Ivy Bridge Quad-Core, Four-Thread Desktop CPUs
Islamists Protest Lady Gaga's Concert in Indonesia
Japan Successfully Broadcasts an 8K Signal Over the Air
ECB boosts loans to 1 trillion Euro to stop credit crunch
Egypt : Mohammed Morsi won with 52 percent
What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up
AMD Launches AMD Embedded R-Series APU Platform
Fed Should not Ignore Emerging Market Crisis
Fed casts shadow over India, emerging markets
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights

USD EUR - 1 year graph	VPN on MacOSX	BlogMeter 1.01