What proportion of gold comes from developing countries?

Gold production is increasingly shifting to developing countries. If South Africa, whose production is on a long-term declining trend, is excluded, their output rose by more than 50% over the past decade. In contrast output from developed countries has fallen.

As a result of these trends, developing countries (including South Africa) accounted for 72% of global output in 2004. Most of this came from low-income or lower-middle-income countries which together accounted for two thirds of global output.

The strongest rise in output has been seen in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) whose gold production rose by 84% between 1994 and 2004. Of the 38 HIPC countries, 14 are significant gold producers with lesser or minor production in at least a further 14 countries. There is potential for substantial additional production in several cases.

The rise in HIPCs' output has been paralleled by rising export dependence on gold. In 2003 gold accounted for 13% of goods (merchandise) exports of the 14 significant producers and 10% of their exports of goods and services. It accounted for nearly 8% of goods exports and over 6% of exports of goods and services for HIPCs as a whole. It is one of the most important exports for HIPCs as a group.

Gold is the leading export for Mali (59% of goods exports in 2003), Tanzania (44%), Ghana (32%), Guyana (26%) and the second most important for Guinea (23%).

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