Companies: OXS   

Bill Trew, boss of Oxus Gold, insists the company’s Amantaytau mine in Uzbekistan is producing at record levels, far removed from the country’s latest insurgency.

Shares in AIM-quoted Oxus have been marked down 7.25p to 48.75p as dealers have taken fright at reports of 600 protesters in eastern Uzbekistan slaughtered by government troops, writes Robert Tyerman. But Trew, newly returned with board colleagues from the central Asian republic, says the trouble is talking place ‘four hours flying time away’ from Amantaytau, ‘as far as the Shetlands from London’, in a geographically cut off region.

He points out that Amantaytau, which produced a record 5,000 oz of gold last week, is covered by political risk insurance and subject to a ten-year agreement with the Uzbek government. People in the capital city of Tashkent are ‘happy’, maintains Trew, who adds ‘we are miners and non-political’.

A change in government involving the ousting of hard-line President Karimov ‘would not bother us at all’. He clearly does not anticipate any parallel to Oxus’ long dispute with the government of neighbouring Kyrgystan over its Jerooy licence in that country – which anyway ended in February with the full reinstatement of the licence to Oxus.