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

The Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS) issued Circular No. 12/2026 and Circular No. 13/2026 on 14 May 2026, restructuring Sudan's gold export regime. Circular 12/2026 abolished restrictions on exporters' use of gold and commodity export earnings — permitting proceeds to fund any Ministry of Trade-authorised import via an "intermediate import account" (21-day utilisation window) — and formally terminated the CBOS monopoly on gold purchases, allowing registered private traders to export through official channels. Circular 13/2026 established a daily gold incentive price (international 24-karat benchmark minus USD 10 per troy ounce, converted to USD per gram), published through the XAR electronic system; commercial banks and export-clearing authorities must clear shipments at or above this price.

Niger's military-led Conseil des Ministres (CNSP) on March 3, 2026 adopted three decrees terminating the establishment agreements of COMINI SARL, AFRIOR SA, and ECOMINE SA — gold mining and refining companies operating in Niger. The grounds cited are failure to pay taxes, non-submission of annual technical and financial reports, and breach of local-development financing commitments since 2023. Formal notices had been issued to the companies on February 17 and July 23, 2025 before the terminations. The action extends the CNSP's systematic tightening over strategic-resource industries, which also saw uranium licence revocations and a mine nationalisation in 2024–2025.

President Daniel Noboa signed Executive Decree 273 on 31 December 2025 (effective 1 January 2026), the most significant overhaul of Ecuador's mining regulation since the 2009 Mining Code. The decree amends the Reglamento General a la Ley de Minería to (i) replace the fixed 3–8% royalty range with a price-indexed sliding scale tied to a trailing three-year LME reference price, (ii) require all mining projects to supply 100% of their electricity needs (no grid draw), (iii) tighten exploration-phase timelines and introduce automatic extinction of concessions where activities do not begin in time, (iv) modify royalty-deduction rules so gold/silver royalties are computed on gross revenue without deductions while small/medium operators of other metals can still deduct refining/transport/benefit costs, and (v) allocate 60% of mining royalties to social projects via decentralised governments (45% provincial, 35% municipal, 20% parochial). The decree was published in Registro Oficial Suplemento 195 of 31 December 2025 and is not retroactive.

Bangladesh's National Board of Revenue gazetted SRO 225-Ain/2025/48/Customs and SRO 226-Ain/2025/48/Customs on 29 May 2025, revising the minimum customs valuation (tariff-value) floors used to assess duty on a range of imported consumer and industrial goods, effective 2 June 2025. The amendment raised minimum import values for chocolate and cocoa-containing food preparations, removed the minimum-value floor for base oil used by petroleum processing/blending industries, and adjusted floors — mostly downward — for soap and other cleaning preparations and a handful of additional product lines. Minimum-value schemes set a customs-assessable price floor per unit regardless of the invoiced transaction value, so a higher floor functions as a de facto increase in the duty base (and hence landed cost) for under-invoicing-prone product categories, while a removed or lowered floor eases the duty base for the affected goods.

Peraturan Menteri Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral (Permen ESDM) No. 6 of 2024, signed by Minister Arifin Tasrif on 30 May 2024 and published in the Berita Negara Republik Indonesia, establishes the procedural framework governing how holders of Mining Business Licences (IUP) and Special Mining Business Licences (IUPK) for copper, iron, lead, and zinc production may continue to sell processed mineral products abroad during the final phase of domestic smelter construction. Licence holders that previously obtained MEMR export recommendations and whose refining facilities have reached commissioning stage but are not yet at full operational capacity may apply for time-bound extensions to sell concentrate and semi-processed ore offshore through 31 December 2024, subject to quarterly physical inspections by the Director General of Minerals and Coal. The regulation is the MEMR-side companion instrument to the same-day Permendag 10/2024 (Ministry of Trade copper-concentrate and anode-sludge export prohibition), together constituting the complete legal architecture of Indonesia's copper hilirisasi (downstream- processing) mandate. Its scope is broader than the Trade Ministry rule: it covers copper, iron, lead, and zinc whereas Permendag 10/2024 targets copper and anode-sludge only, and it operates as the conditional derogation mechanism (MEMR) to Permendag 10/2024's absolute prohibition regime (Trade Ministry).

Uganda's Statutory Instrument No. 30 of 2024, gazetted and effective 24 May 2024, prohibits the export of unrefined gold and mandates a minimum purity threshold of 99.9% for all gold export consignments. Exporters must demonstrate compliance via a purity certificate and proof of payment of an export levy of US$200 per kilogram of refined gold. The instrument replaces a previous statutory instrument of the same name that had expired on 30 June 2023, re-enacting and reinforcing the in-country value-addition mandate for Uganda's gold sector.