Recent, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ("MIIT") has distributed the Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Transformation and Upgrading of the Gold Industry (the "Opinions").
The Opinions set out clear development goals from five perspectives, such as "continuing growth in production, capacity and reserves" and "obviously enhanced level of science and technology", stating that during the 13th Five-Year period, the gold production will grow at the average rate of around 3 percent per annum, and reach 500 tonnes by the end of 2020, when the annual capacity of gold will be up to 600 tonnes, with 125 tonnes of newly added gold capacity and 40 tonnes of eliminated backward capacity. And the number of enterprises engaging in the exploitation of gold will decrease from over 600 to about 450. To this end, the Opinions ascertain eight tasks, including "improving the gold market and strengthening risk prevention and control". Moreover, the Opinions set out the need to encourage the integrated utilization of low-grade, intractable and associated resources, the integrated utilization of tailings, and the integrated recovery of cyanide slags, an effort to improve resource recovery and utilization rate. Also, the Opinions stress efforts to encourage the innovation of gold-related financial products, develop the gold lease, gold forward, gold option and other businesses in an orderly manner, establish a multi-layer gold market system, and enhance competitiveness of the Chinese financial market and its capacity of responding to crisis.