CARACAS – The Venezuelan government has set itself the goal of raising annual gold production from the current 4.2 tons to 10 tons next year, the minister of basic industries and mining said Monday.

Production volume could triple and reach 15 tons by 2012, Jose Khan told journalists, while showing Chinese officials around the Capitan Eduardo Vera ore-processing plant.

Venezuela currently has physical gold reserves of 360.7 tons.

The high-level delegation from China is in southern Venezuela with an eye toward forming binational ventures to exploit the region’s vast deposits of iron, bauxite and gold.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Sunday that Caracas and Beijing are working on establishing a “colossal strategy” to “raise and strengthen” the production of Venezuela’s basic industries, chiefly iron and aluminum.

Venezuela’s reserves of iron and bauxite amount to 14,000 and 6,000 tons, respectively, according to official figures from 2008.

The renewed industrialization of the sector being promoted by the government includes the work of suppressing illegal mining, which has led to the deportation of miners chiefly from Brazil, Colombia and Guyana, who belong to criminal groups, according to Chavez.

A ruling by the Venezuelan Central Bank on May 5, 2009, established that at least 70 percent of the gold mined legally in Venezuela must go to the internal market and only the remainder may be exported.

Of the 70 percent that stays in Venezuela, two-thirds must be handed over to the Central Bank and the rest to the domestic manufacturing sector. EFE