South Africa’s gold production costs are among the highest in the world, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) said in its December Quarterly Bulletin released on Tuesday.
Continued increases in input costs had an adverse affect on gold mining in the third quarter of 2007.
“The real value added by the gold-mining sector moved sideways in the third quarter, while production of coal was hampered by climatic conditions which influenced open-cast mining operations,” the SARB reported.
Platinum-group metals benefited from firmer international commodity prices and the increased demand for emission control catalysts and jewellery.
The bank said real mining output strengthened in the third quarter of 2007 after contracting in both the first and second quarters.
Subsequent to an annualised decline of 3% in the second quarter of 2007, real output of the mining sector increased at an annualised rate of 4% in the third quarter of 2007, thereby contributing a quarter of a percentage point to quarterly gross domestic product growth, the SARB said.
“This turnaround was primarily due to an improvement in non-gold mining, particularly the production of diamonds and platinum,” it added.
Both gold and non-gold mining contributed to job creation during the quarter to end in June.
While total employment growth in the non-agricultural sector slowed to 2,6% in the second quarter to end June from 4% in the first quarter to end March, employment across the mining industry grew by 6,4% in the June quarter.
Jobs in the non-gold sector jumped 8,2% while those in gold mining rose by 2,9% during the second quarter of the year.
In the year from end June 2006 to end June 2007, the mining industry added 34 651 jobs.
This means that the mining industry accounted for 14,6% of the 237 624 new jobs created across all sectors over the same period.
SARB’s statistical tables, however, reveal that the mining sector employs roughly a fourth of the people it used to seven years ago.
At the end of the second quarter mining industry employment stood at 118 200 — significantly lower than the 416 270 employed by the sector in 2000. ‒ I-Net Bridge