Uzbekistan joins the Top 10 countries in the world for gold mining, the World Gold Council said. Uzbekistan significantly increased its output last year, from 94.6 tonnes in 2019 to 101.6 tonnes, the first time it’s exceeded 100 tonnes in one year.
Uzbekistan is home to Muruntau, the world’s largest open-pit gold mine by area. The project, which also contains huge deposits of turquoise and arsenic, sits atop what many geologists believe could be the biggest gold reserve in the world.
Gold is one of the rarest elements in the world, making up between 0.001 and 0.006 parts per million of the earth’s crust. But how much gold is the world digging up each year and what countries produce the most?
According to data released this month by the World Gold Council (WGC), global gold mine production in 2020 was 3,478.1 tonnes (122.7 million ounces), down slightly for the second year in a row after rising consecutively for the past few years. Obviously the pandemic contributed to this slowdown last year, but we may also be seeing the consequences of steadily shrinking exploration budgets."
