GOLD
Gold output falls 28.2%

Thu, 10 Apr 2008

South African gold production has dropped 28.2 percent in the year from February last year, official data released on Thursday showed.

Gold production after seasonal adjustment fell 11.1 percent in the three months to end February, with February recording a decrease of 7.7 percent alone.

Statistics South Africa's data shows that gold's continuing production decline helped pull overall mining output lower.

Actual total mining production for February 2008 decreased by 7.3 percent compared with February 2007, and after seasonal adjustment, total mining production for the three months from December 2007 to February 2008 decreased by 5.2 percent compared with the previous three months.

Non-gold minerals production also dropped 4.1 percent during the three-month period, but recorded a fall of only 3.2 percent year-on-year.

"The major contributors to the decrease of 5.2 percent were the production of platinum group metals (PGMs) (-2.3 percentage points), gold (-1.5 percentage points) and diamonds (-1.5 percentage points)," said Statistics South Africa.

Mining Production and Sales data also showed that the value of mineral sales in January was 11.7 percent higher on the year at R18.4-billion, with gold sales down 1.3 percent at R2.92-billion but non-gold mineral sales up 14.6 percent at R15.49-billion.

Shorter-term seasonally adjusted gold sales were, however, up 16.1 percent at R3.1-billion from December last year to January this year as the gold price rallied to record highs of over $1000 an ounce.

Non-gold sales fell two percent in January, cancelling out gold sales gains to record a total mineral sales figure of 20.2 percent -0.5 percent up from December.