Recent data on the 1995 production of the Rosario gold mine shows that the state-owned company exported gold and silver worth some US$65 million last year. This year the company has plans to export an average of 500 ounces a day or 182,5000 ounces for the year, for some US$73 million. The goal is to reach a daily figure of 600 ounces, bringing annual production to 219,000 ounces, which means US$87 million a year in hard currency.
By March of this year, production had increased to 30,947 ounces of gold and 216,258 ounces of silver, for a 60% and 45.8% increase in the two metals over last year.
Rosario Dominicana has stabilized the production of gold during the months of March and April, when an average of 432 ounces a day was produced for the first time since 1991, when the mine’s open pit deposits came to an end and the operation moved to the processing of transition minerals and the sulphur deposits.
Following an investment of over US$70 million, and after major delays, the state-owned corporation has readied its new activated charcoal (CIL) plant, that was originally entrusted to the U.S. firm Fluor Engineering, but was later revised by Stone and Western from the United States and Noranda from Canada. Fluor Engineering prepared a project to extract 300,000 ounces of gold from 850,000 metric tones of ore containing sulphur acid. The project had a price tag of US$450 million of which the Interamerican Development Bank would provide US$350. The mining site is estimated to contain 100 million metric tonnes of ore that would average 4.2 grams of gold per tonne. The Balaguer administration rejected the process after a detailed study following his return to power in 1986 because of the high cost, and because it was considered dangerous to the environment. The sulphur acid would be transported by pipes some 40 kilometers from Pueblo Viejo, Cotui, to the port of Sanchez. The area is an agricultural zone and a well-identified seismic fault runs under it.