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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (41088)	11/14/2005 7:28:14 PM
From: regli	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

I don't think it will be easy to increase gold production. Given the fact that we moved from approx $260 to $470 today the following should not be happening: S. Africa's gold output may drop to 80-year low: report news.xinhuanet.com JOHANNESBURG, Nov. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- South Africa, the world's biggest gold producer and exporter, could see its 2005 gold output dropping to 300 tons from 346 tons in 2004, the lowest level since 1931, a gold analyst said on Monday. From 2006, the country's gold output was likely to stabilize atabout 300 tons as a number of gold mining projects came on line like the South Deep mine, AngloGold Ashanti's Moab Khotsong mine and new gold mining projects that Harmony Gold was developing, said Dave Davis at Andisa Securities, according to an I-Net Bridgereport. In 2002, South Africa produced 400 tons of gold, said the report. The 2003 production dropped to 373 tons. Between 2002 and 2004, South African gold mines saw a tremendous increase in costs relative to their global peers like world number one gold miner Newmont, Davis said. Newmont's cost per troy ounce of gold produced increased by 22 percent to an average of 232 US dollars per ounce, while South African costs per ounce doubled to an average of 395 dollars, he added. As a result of the appreciation of the local currency rand against the US dollar, South African gold mining companies aggressively dealt with the cost problem by restructuring their operations, Davis said. From 2002 to 2004, the gold mining industry was also hit by sharp increases in explosives, steel, fuel and water as well as other costs, he added. Andisa Securities is a stock and share brokerage registered on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Enditem