Modeling the Impact of Mine and Country Variations on the Cost and Country-Benefit of Gold Mining

This paper dwells on regression models of cash-cost and country-benefit developed to enable accounting for the cumulative impact of the determinant parameters in the prediction of cash-costs and country-benefits of gold mining opportunities in the justification of taxation regimes and selection of investment targets worldwide. The data used in the generation of regression models include the total cash-cost and country-benefit per ounce vs the parameters of rock-mass (type of ore body, its dip angle, strike length and thickness), mine-design (rate of gold production, type of mine, depth of mine, gold price and age of mine) and country parameters (the Fraser Institute parameters: taxation regime, infrastructure, environmental regime, political stability, labor regulations and security) were generated from 160 gold mines in the top 20 gold rich countries for a period of 7 years from 2002 to 2008. The regression models show that the determinants account for 71% and 55% of the determinants of cash-cost and country-benefit respectively. Depending on the availability of data, the regression models generated in this study could be enhanced by adding into the parameters used in the regression analysis, the unaccounted for mine and country parameters. Nevertheless, the regression models generated in this study could be used to predict the cash-costs and country-benefits of gold mining opportunities in the justification of taxation regimes and selection of investment targets worldwide.