Huge Decline In Peru’s Silver Production Suggests Future Supply At Risk

The Peru Ministry of Energy and Mining just released their silver production data for February, and it was a whopper to the downside. Actually, I was quite surprised to see how much Peru’s silver production declined versus the same month last year. Also, Peru’s gold February production took a similar big hit.

According to the Peru Ministry of Energy and Mining data, the country’s silver production fell 12% to 323.1 metric tons (mt) this February versus 367.4 mt the same month last year:

This is a 44 mt decline in one month, nearly 1.5 million oz lost. Here is the table from the Peru Ministry of Energy and Mining showing various metals production data for February:

Silver is shown as “PLATA” and as we see, overall silver production for JAN-FEB has declined 6.7% compared to the same period last year. Which means, Peru’s silver production took a much larger hit in February than in January.  Furthermore, Peru’s gold (shown as “ORO”) production also declined significantly by falling 11.3% in February.

The Peru Ministry of Energy and Mining put out this brief explanation why their silver and gold production declined in February:

However, in this month precious metals slightly suffered a lower production volume gold decreased by -11.91%, while silver -11.29%. In the accumulated January, national production of these precious metals decreased by 6.81% for gold and 6.3% for silver.

In the national production of silver, the Lima region (127,157 kg fine), Ancash (126,816 kg fine) and Junín (116,473 kg fine) regions are in the top positions, associated with the polymetallic exploitation of the center of the country. Peru is the second largest silver producer in the world and boasts the largest proven and probable reserves of this precious metal in the world.

Antamina (101,824 kg Fine) in the Ancash region, followed by Uchucchacua (84,745 Kg. Finos) in Lima and Inmaculada (30,468 Kg Finos) in Ayacucho, among several others.

In the case of gold, the national production accumulated to February 2017, reached 23.8 tons fine. Its production was concentrated in the regions of La Libertad (6.4 tons) contributing the total production in 26.92%; Cajamarca cooperating with 23.32% (5.5 tons fine) and Arequipa (3.03 tons fine) contributing 12.74%. These regions accumulate 63% of the national gold production.

The decrease is explained by the lower results (-23.53%) of the main producer: Minera Yanacocha S.R.L. Whose operations in Cajamarca have been affected by an exhaustion of the reserves in the current deposits in operation.