The impact of mining in low income economies

From a new paper by colleagues at OPM with the ICMM. 

Gettin' by digging gold

Fascinating article by Hez Holland on the artisanal mining business in South Sudan. The numbers sound kind of crazy but then South Sudan is a kind of crazy place. 

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 ...  

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 ... 

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."

That seems far too high to really be an average day. Perhaps some more boasting. But then

In the last year alone, Likuam has bought 10 cows, each worth around 1,000 pounds.

Predictably the government is keen to get in on the action and get some big foreign companies in to do some real exploration that they can tax. Given the rather weak relationship between government revenues and public services, I'd like to see some research on the current scale of the industry and how many people are making a living with it, and then what we might expected to see from large commercial mining in terms of both revenues and local employment. One of the key messages from WDR2013: not all jobs are equal for development. 

Minerals in Mongolia

Mining experts estimate that the country possesses as much as $1 trillion worth of untapped precious metals and minerals in at least 6000 sites. That works out to potentially over $333,333 per every man, woman and child in the country.

ᔥ Brookings ↬ Kari

Which countries are most vulnerable to the resource curse?

A new report by my colleague Dan Haglund suggests it is;

Non-fuel, mineral-dependent countries:

Bolivia, Burkino Faso, the DRC, Ghana, Guyana, Laos, Mali, Mauritania, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Tanzania and Zambia.

Fuel-dependent countries: Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Sudan, Timor-Leste and Yemen.

See the full report here or coverage in the FT here.

Blessing or curse? The rise of mineral dependence among low- and middle-income countries