Canadian miner Barrick Gold Corporation has an-nounced that significant exploration successes could encourage the com-pany to extend the life of the Tongon gold mine in Côte d’Ivoire.
The initiative was unveiled by Mark Bristow, the president and chief ex-ecutive of Barrick Gold, who spoke at a local media briefing.
“The successful commissioning of Tongon in the midst of a civil war was a landmark achievement in the development of a gold mining industry in the highly prospective but underexplored Côte d’Ivoire. Since then, the mine has been consistently profitable – it has just declared a $150 million dividend for the second quarter of this year – and boasts one of the best safety records in the Barrick group,” Bristow said, as quoted in a state-ment.
“Over time it has invested $1.77 billion in the Ivorian economy in the form of taxes, salaries, payments to local suppliers and infrastructure develop-ments,” according to the company’s president and CEO.