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Mining is full of quiet achievers; be it individuals, companies, or even countries.
Globally speaking Australia, Canada, South Africa, China, India and the US are in focus every day, but what about the countries that are the quiet achievers?
What about Chile, Ghana, Kazakhstan? Kazakhstan has been touted as one of world’s best endowed states when it comes to high class deposits, if perhaps one of the world’s most overlooked.
It is the world’s largest uranium producer under IAEA standards, the fourth largest copper producer (with 40 million tonnes in proven reserves), has the world’s ninth largest proven gold reserve and almost the same levels of zinc, but often fails to rate a mention.
As Austrade states “Kazakhstan is one of the world’s most promising emerging markets for natural resources”, and importantly for Australian operators it is looking to double mineral production within the next five years. Kazakh president Nazarbayev outlined a gold production goal of 70 million tonnes per year before 2015.
This has created a high potential for Australian operators, with the potential to rate as highly as China, after it rated ahead of the major Australian trade partner, ranked at 59th according to the World Bank’s 2010 ‘Doing Business’ survey.
The nation is making a major bid to attract investment in to the region, changing its mining laws and allocating nearly a billion dollars for new geological exploration programs in the region.
The country’s government approved close to USD $885 million for the implementation of the new program, according to its vice minister of new technologies Nuralan Surabayev.
The program will focus on the search for new deposits in the country as well as a new Geological Exploration Centre to further attract investment.
“Under the industry blueprint, the Kazakhstan government has stipulated several priorities for the mining industry. Large enterprises are charged with increasing production of basic metals while small and medium-sized businesses will be supported to establish high value-added end production utilising these base metals,” Austrade explained.
Business has already started growing between Australian and Kazakhstan with approximately $38 million worth of goods and services exported to the country.
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