Guyana has blacklisted more than 100 non-nationals in a crackdown on illegal gold mining, according to Natural Resources Minister Vickram Bharrat. He said the tougher enforcement has coincided with a significant increase in gold declarations in 2026. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the body that oversees Guyana's extractives transparency reporting have separately identified gaps in compliance and disclosure that enforcement figures do not address.

The government's measures follow a directive from President Irfaan Ali in January, which ordered that registered dredges with no declaration of gold be deregistered, and that illegal foreign miners be identified for prosecution and expulsion. The Ministry of Finance's mid-year report put the rise in declarations at 10.9 per cent. Mr Bharrat said the government wants operators to obtain permits and register their equipment, and that legitimate mining is not the target.

The official buying network has grown. Guyana now has six Guyana Gold Board offices, up from three. Four gold exporters are licensed, along with between 60 and 70 licensed traders. Mr Bharrat said transactions involving the Gold Board and licensed dealers are recorded, and that traders must use official receipt books. Together these records are meant to allow gold to be traced from the miner through the authorised purchasing and export chain.

The IMF raised related concerns in March 2025. Its staff concluding statement for the Article IV mission said the authorities were working to implement the beneficial ownership transparency recommendation from the 2024 report under the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). The statement added that there was scope to strengthen regulatory compliance in the non-oil mining sector, particularly among large-scale operators. These were staff observations, and the Fund's Executive Board concluded the consultation in May 2025.

The Guyana EITI (GYEITI) faces constraints of its own. According to its 2025 annual progress review, the country published its seventh national report on 31 December 2025, but mining sector data collection remained limited. Stakeholders were reluctant to submit reporting templates because of security concerns in the interior, so the data stayed aggregated. That prevents readers from seeing payments by individual company.

Security is a recognised difficulty. A 2024 report prepared for GYEITI by consultants on beneficial ownership concluded that the security concerns expressed by some companies are genuine. The review also records that a shortage of technical staff led the secretariat to set aside the collection of beneficial ownership data, in order to complete basic reporting tasks. It describes a governance deadlock within the multi-stakeholder group, the three-sector board that supervises the process.

The Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) has offered a more favourable finding on licensing. In a statement dated 6 October, it described an ISO 9001-certified review of its 2023 and 2024 activity, covering six documented processes for applications and transfers across small, medium and large mineral properties. The commission said the review found no material deviations from the legal and regulatory framework in the award or transfer of mineral and petroleum licences. As described, the review concerns licensing procedure. It does not address gold declarations or the disclosure of company owners.

The results therefore measure different things. Blacklistings, deregistrations and the number of purchasing offices describe action by the state. Higher declarations suggest that more gold is passing through official channels, although the figures do not show how much continues to move outside them. The IMF and GYEITI findings concern information that remains out of public view, namely who owns the companies holding licences and how much each pays.

Mr Bharrat's account, the GGMC review and the transparency report each come from bodies with a stake in the outcome, and none has been tested by an independent audit of declarations against estimated production. The GYEITI report indicates that the data needed for such a comparison is incomplete. Authorities have said the beneficial ownership recommendation is being implemented, but no date has been published for the collection to resume.

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