Kumtor Gold Company has announced fallen gold production at Kyrgyzstan’s nationalised flagship Kumtor mine—but the authorities have given assurances that the decline is temporary.

Kumtor, located at 13,000 feet (almost 4,000 metres) near the Chinese border in the Tian Shan mountains, is vital to Kyrgyzstan’s economy. It accounts for around a tenth of Kyrgyz GDP. In 2023, state company Kumtor paid more than $200mn into the country’s budget.

In 2021, Kyrgyzstan’s then new Japarov administration seized the mine from Canada’s Centerra Gold. A deal between the Kyrgyz government and Centerra on the transfer of the mine to the Kyrgyz state was eventually struck, but not before, almost exactly three years ago, Centerra raised anxieties that the mine under the new government-appointed management, was falling into operational difficulties. One claim was that glacial water was flowing uncontrolled into a mine pit. 

There are also worries that gold that can be extracted by open-pit mining at Kumtor is dwindling and that the miners will have to step up efforts in far more exacting underground mining to access sufficient amounts of the precious metal.

In 2023, Kumtor Gold Company produced 13.5 tonnes of gold, significantly less than hoped for. In previous years, yearly production has risen as high as 20-22 tonnes.

The Times of Central Asia on October 10 quoted Kumtor representatives as stating: “Reduced gold production targets are common due to the low grade of gold in commercial ore mined at Kumtor. The mining of low-grade ore will continue for some time. In the future, gold production is expected to increase to 17-18 tonnes gradually. This takes into account the implementation of projects for underground mining of gold-containing ore and processing waste ore from the tailings pond.”

“Right now, the ore is poor,” Head of the Cabinet Akylbek Japarov was cited as saying by the media outlet in response to the criticism over the performance of the mine. “We plan to mine 14 tonnes each [year]. Previously, we were getting 17 tonnes. This happens in geology.”

Another difficulty at the Kumtor deposit is that a substantial amount of its gold is under glaciers, which environmentalists do not want to see disturbed.