Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 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.

On 25 February 2026 Zimbabwe's Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, under Minister Polite Kambamura, announced an immediate and indefinite suspension of exports of all unprocessed minerals — including lithium-bearing spodumene concentrates, which had previously been exempt from the country's December 2022 ban on raw lithium ore (Statutory Instrument 213 of 2022). The directive was communicated by ministerial letter dated 17 February 2026 to the Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe and copied to lithium producers; the suspension took effect on 25 February and explicitly covered consignments already in transit, with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (ZIMRA) and the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) ordered to halt clearance at the border. The measure brings forward by roughly eleven months a lithium-concentrate export ban that had been telegraphed for January 2027, and broadens it to all raw mineral exports. The Minister cited "national interest", in-country beneficiation, transparency, and prevention of mineral export "leakages" (smuggling and under-invoicing) as the rationale. Bloomberg and Reuters reporting noted under-declaration of grade and value as a proximate trigger; the government later (April 2026) clarified that reinstated exports would require Quota Verification certificates, monthly reporting, on-site assay laboratories, and individual producer-level export ceilings — i.e. the suspension functions as a reset to a quota regime rather than a permanent embargo. Zimbabwe is the world's fifth-largest lithium producer (~6-7% of global supply on a contained-LCE basis) and exported 1.128 million tonnes of spodumene concentrate in 2025 (an 11% YoY increase). The producer base is overwhelmingly Chinese-owned: Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt (Arcadia / Prospect), Sinomine Resource Group (Bikita Minerals), Chengxin Lithium (Sabi Star), and Sichuan Yahua (Kamativi) together account for the majority of output. The ban therefore primarily disrupts Chinese midstream lithium converters in Sichuan and Jiangxi that depend on Zimbabwean spodumene feedstock, while incrementally tightening the global seaborne concentrate market. The action is structurally a continuation of the EM resource-nationalism / upstream-capture template pioneered by Indonesia's nickel-ore ban (2020) and most recently extended by the DRC's ARECOMS cobalt suspension and quota system (Feb-Oct 2025). It reinforces a pattern in which producing-country governments capture processing margin from consuming-country smelters, and it does so in a commodity (lithium) where ex-China refining capacity is still thin, magnifying near-term price impact even though the headline share of global supply removed is moderate.