Sudan signs agreement with Kuwait to establish mining laboratories

November 7, 2013 (KHARTOUM) – The Sudanese government signed an agreement on Thursday with the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) to establish integrated mining laboratories at a cost of $65 million.

The project, which includes 12 integrated labs, will be built over a 100,000 sq meter area in the town of Garri north of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum and will be completed within three years.

The undersecretary at the finance ministry, Youssef Al-Hussein, signed the agreement on behalf of the Sudanese government while the head of the KFAED technical mission in Sudan Mohamed Hussein Sadiqi, signed on behalf of the KFAED in the presence of Sudan’s finance minister Ali Mahmoud Abdel-Rasool, Sudan’s Mining minister Kamal Abdel Latif, and members of the Kuwaiti diplomatic mission in Sudan.

Gold has become Sudan’s biggest export, partially replacing oil revenues that made up more than 50% of state income until South Sudan’s secession.

The Sudanese government said that its gold sales amounted to $2.2 billion in 2012.

The ministry of mining recently stated that 20 out of 90 companies in that sector would be going into production stages by the end of 2013.

(ST)