Individual entrepreneurs to be permitted to engage in gold mining from March 1, 2019

From March 1 onwards, the list of activities that individual entrepreneurs (IE) without a legal entity can engage in is supplemented by a new paragraph. This follows from the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers.

The President signed a decree on legalization of prospecting in November 2018. It was said that in certain regions of the country there was an increase in social tensions and worsening of the criminal situation, including the ongoing unauthorized mining of precious metals.

The main reason for this is the lack of opportunity to legally engage in non-industrial mining of precious metals in subsoil areas that are not quantitatively and qualitatively industrial development objects.

In particular, unauthorized mining of precious metals has become systemic in territories of the Navoi, Samarkand and Bukhara regions, which leads to a shadow turnover of precious metals and their illegal export abroad. There are also injuries and deaths during illegal gold mining.

A permissive document should be obtained for gold mining, it will be issued through an electronic auction for a period of three years.

Earlier, it was reported that there are enough places in Uzbekistan where gold can be mined using the prospecting method. So, in particular, it is known about the territory with a total area of 590 hectares, where gold reserves in the depths exceed three tons.

It is not possible to extract this gold by industrial means, this can only be executed by prospecting. There are estimated sites on 75,5 thousand hectares, mainly in mountainous areas.