Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

On 19 June 2026, President Mamadi Doumbouya chaired a strategic meeting in Conakry with industrial, semi-industrial and artisanal gold operators and gold-buying counters, announcing that "l'exportation de l'or brut appartient désormais au passé" — a formal and permanent prohibition on exporting unrefined gold mined in Guinea. All gold must henceforth be refined domestically, primarily via the state-backed Nimba Gold Refinery (Gbessia, Conakry), before any international sale. Operators who continue exporting raw gold risk suspension or revocation of their operating licence and mining convention. The measure extends Guinea's Simandou 2040 local-transformation doctrine — already applied to bauxite and iron ore — to the gold sector for the first time.

Presidential Decree No. 193, signed by President Vladimir Putin on 25 March 2026 and in force from 1 May 2026, prohibits the export from Russia of refined gold bars (аффинированное золото в слитках) with a total weight exceeding 100 grams by individuals, legal entities, and individual entrepreneurs. Narrow exceptions apply for EAEU-destination and non-EAEU-destination movements through designated international airports (Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Knevichi/Vladivostok) conditional on Federal Assay Office or Federal Border Service permits. The stated rationale — curbing shadow-economy use of bullion as a foreign-currency substitute and closing capital-flight channels — is analytically inseparable from the broader post-2022 Russia counter-sanctions context and the G7 / LBMA delisting of Russian-origin gold.

Russia's Government adopted Resolution N° 1947 on 28 November 2025, extending for a fourth consecutive six-month period the temporary ban on the export of waste and scrap of precious metals and of electrical and electronic equipment used principally for precious-metals recovery. The restriction runs from 1 December 2025 through 31 May 2026, covering waste and scrap of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium, and ruthenium, as well as metals plated or clad with precious metals. Carve-outs apply for cathode antimony ingots and small laboratory samples (≤500 g per batch) shipped by refineries for quality verification.

President Peter Mutharika signed an executive order effective 21 October 2025 prohibiting the export of all raw, unprocessed minerals extracted in Malawi, covering uranium, rare earth elements, niobium, graphite, tantalum, bauxite, rutile, gold, copper, diamonds, heavy mineral sands, and all other minerals. Minerals that have been processed, refined, or value-added in Malawi are exempt. The order aligns with an announced National Mining Corporation to oversee mineral production and processing, and introduces fines and sanctions under Malawi law for violations.

China's Ministry of Commerce and General Administration of Customs jointly issued Announcement No. 33 of 2024 on 15 August 2024, imposing an export licensing regime on antimony ore, antimony metal, antimony oxides (purity ≥99.99%), organic antimony compounds, antimony hydride, indium antimonide, and gold-antimony smelting technology, effective 15 September 2024. The announcement also covers six-sided top-press equipment used in superhard-materials (diamond, cubic boron nitride) production. China accounts for approximately 47% of global antimony mine output and an estimated 75-80% of refined antimony supply; in the months following implementation, Chinese antimony export volumes fell by approximately 97% and global antimony trioxide spot prices roughly doubled.

Resolution No. 1466 of 27 December 2022 approves, for 2023, the volume of export quotas for licensed goods (Annex 1), the controlled ozone-depleting substances and fluorinated gases whose export and import require a licence (Annexes 2-3), and a list of goods whose export requires a licence (Annex 5). Annex 1 sets a zero quota for hard coal and anthracite, wood fuel, natural gas of Ukrainian origin, unwrought gold and silver and precious-metal scrap, and finite quotas of 900,000 t for coking coal and 540,000 t for fuel oil. The resolution took effect on 1 January 2023 and was amended repeatedly during 2023.

Indonesia's Ministry of Trade issued Regulation (Permendag) No. 18 of 2021 on 1 April 2021, establishing an omnibus schedule of goods prohibited from export and goods prohibited from import. Global Trade Alert logs the measure as bundling an export ban and an import ban that took effect 19 November 2021, with tracked coverage spanning precious and semi-precious stones/metals, jewellery and related articles, and fertilizers/pesticides. The regulation consolidated and repealed several prior prohibited- goods instruments. It was later superseded by Permendag No. 47 of 2025.

South Africa's Precious Metals Act 37 of 2005 establishes a standing, discretionary ministerial export-approval regime for platinum group metals. Section 12(2) provides that "no person may export any unwrought or semi-fabricated metals of the platinum group except with the written approval of the Minister which shall be granted subject to the promotion of equitable access to, and the orderly local beneficiation of such metals." The Act was assented to and published in the Government Gazette on 21 April 2006 (Act 37 of 2005) and commenced on 1 July 2007 per Presidential proclamation under s.25 (Government Gazette 30071 of 12 July 2007). South Africa supplies roughly 70-80% of global mined platinum, rhodium and iridium output, making this the register's first PGM-specific ZA export instrument (prior ZA filings — MPRDA 2002, the 2025 Mineral Resources Development Bill, IDS 2026 — are generic mining-law/industrial-policy instruments rather than PGM-specific export controls).