Guyana has stepped up enforcement in its gold-mining sector, blacklisting more than 100 foreign operators and tightening requirements for miners, but concerns over production declarations, transparency and regulatory compliance remain as the country seeks to ensure that more of its mineral wealth enters legitimate channels.
The International Monetary Fund identified stronger regulatory compliance in the non-oil mining sector, particularly among large-scale operators, as a priority in its March 2025 assessment of Guyana’s economy. The Fund also highlighted the need to improve beneficial ownership transparency in the extractive industries.
While the government has introduced tougher controls and reported increased gold declarations, industry reporting has identified continuing difficulties obtaining detailed information from mining operators and establishing who ultimately owns extractive companies.
In September 2026, Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat told the Department of Public Information that more than 100 non-nationals had been blacklisted amid intensified enforcement against illegal mining and cases in which production was poorly declared or not declared at all.
Bharrat said the enforcement drive had coincided with a significant increase in gold declarations during 2026, even as controls across mining districts were tightened.
The government has also expanded the network through which miners can sell gold legally. According to the minister, Guyana has six Guyana Gold Board offices, four licensed gold exporters and between 60 and 70 licensed gold traders.
The authorities have introduced a centralised traceability system under which licensed traders use official receipt books and transactions involving the Gold Board and licensed dealers are recorded. The system is intended to help track gold from miners through legitimate purchasing and export channels.
The measures follow a January 2026 directive from President Irfaan Ali requiring miners to declare their 2025 gold production. The government also ordered the deregistration of registered dredges with no production declarations and called for illegal foreign operators to be identified for prosecution and possible expulsion.
Beyond enforcement against individual operators, questions remain about the amount of detailed information available to the public about the wider extractive sector.
Guyana’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GYEITI), which seeks to improve public disclosure of revenues and other information from the extractive industries, has faced difficulties obtaining detailed reporting from mining stakeholders.
A review of the initiative’s 2025 progress, reported by Kaieteur News in May 2026, said mining-sector data collection remained constrained because some stakeholders were reluctant to submit detailed reporting templates, citing security concerns.
As a result, much of the information was presented in aggregated form, limiting the level of detail available to examine individual operators and trace the sector’s financial flows.
The same review identified delays in work to improve beneficial ownership transparency. Beneficial ownership information is intended to identify the individuals who ultimately own or control a company, rather than stopping at the name of a registered business or intermediary.
According to the report, GYEITI’s work to collect and follow up on beneficial ownership data was temporarily put on hold because of staffing and technical-capacity constraints, as the secretariat prioritised other reporting requirements.
The review also identified vacancies and disagreements affecting the initiative’s multi-stakeholder governance arrangements, which brought together representatives from government, industry and civil society.
These challenges do not establish that a particular mining company has breached the law. They do, however, raise questions about how effectively the public can examine ownership, production and financial information across an industry that operates across extensive and often remote areas of the country.
Without sufficiently detailed disclosures, it becomes more difficult to compare declared production with other available records, scrutinise the sector’s contribution to public revenue and establish which individuals ultimately benefit from extractive activities.
In its March 2025 Article IV consultation statement, the IMF said strengthening regulatory compliance in the non-oil mining sector should remain a priority, with particular emphasis on larger operators.
The Fund also highlighted beneficial ownership transparency as part of the wider governance and anti-corruption reforms needed in the extractive industries. The authorities, in their response recorded in the IMF’s subsequent report, said they remained committed to implementing the relevant Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative standards and strengthening compliance in non-oil mining.
The recommendation is significant because the compliance challenge extends beyond detecting illegal mining in the interior. It also involves ensuring that licensed operations meet regulatory requirements, production is properly recorded, transactions can be traced and information about companies is available for scrutiny.
The IMF’s statement did not identify particular companies as being non-compliant, nor did it provide a new count of operators breaching the rules. Instead, it identified regulatory compliance as an area requiring further strengthening.
The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission has also published a statement addressing compliance in the award and transfer of extractive licences.
On October 6, 2026, the GGMC said it had reviewed processes applied during the 2023 and 2024 reporting periods against the relevant legal and regulatory framework.
For mineral licences, the review covered six documented application and transfer processes involving medium- and large-scale mineral properties within its ISO 9001-certified quality management system.
The commission said it identified no material deviations from the legal and regulatory framework governing the award and transfer of mineral licences at small, medium and large scales during those two years. It separately reported no material deviations in the award and transfer of petroleum licences over the same period.
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