Ukraine may produce a ton of gold yearly in 5 years

The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) in cooperation with the National Service of Geology and Mineral Resources (NSGMR) this year, tentatively in the summer, will begin commercial production of Ukrainian gold, NSGMR head Eduard Stavytsky said.

"The NBU last year incorporated a geological company with six licenses for gold production - Pivnichgeologiya. "In two most promising fields - this is the Klintsovsky site in Kirovohrad region - in the summer geological and industrial work on the extraction of gold will begin," he said. According to Stavytsky, the National Bank will finance all works in the field and dispose of the gold. Gold reserves in Ukraine, according to the NSGMR chief are about 2,500-3,000 tons. This is the fields in the Carpathian Mountains (400 tons), the Great Donbas (500 tons), the resources of Kirovohrad, Dnipropetrovsk regions and Crimea. According to Stavytsky, Ukraine can reach the production of 1 ton of gold in three to five years. "Today, all gold is bought - at about 5 tons a year. We could cut the import by third," he said. The attempts to launch gold mining in Ukraine were made even before -in 1990. In 1999, even the first bar was cast in the Muzhyevske field in the Transcarpathian region. Later, however, the production was suspended because of its unprofitability. By 2003, gold production in Ukraine had been halted.