General discussion, page-1797

Thousands rally in Bamako against ECOWAS in support of the Military Government.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/14/malians-rally-after-army-calls-protests-over-ecowas-sanctions

I'm quite sure a compromise will be reached soon, just depends on how affected the Government is by these sanctions. Then we'll probably go through the same process again when the new deadline approaches. In the mean time we'll keep mining & developing Goulamina.

IMO the jailing of the PM last May was more serious than this impasse. It took 2 weeks for our share price to recover. Hopefully it'll be a bit quicker this time. A week has already passed.

I think we'll have news of the transfer of the mining license soon, allowing the official JV to be formed, moneys available for use. I think this will be the next catalyst for our SP. Mike's response to my email insinuated significant progress had been made on that front post sanctions. He wouldn't have been so emphatic if no progress had been made since the sanctions were put in place.

Of course we'll get a general update in the upcoming Quarterly due within 2 weeks.

I remember all the doom & gloom when we got that tax bill last year. I think it's now mostly forgotten, it's not even shown on our Balance Sheet, our June 30 tax liability is less than the Dec 31 2020 figure which was prior to the bill.

I think you have to put the risk of Africa into perspective, they do things differently over there. IMO project execution risk is greater in Australia. Imagine the time it would take to get approval to mine Goulamina or to drain Morila if it was in Australia. It would almost certainly impact Indigenous land and endanger so called rare plants or animals. Then in Australia you have massive salaries, anything to do with mining at the very least starts at $100k. In Mali the average skilled worker gets $1500 pa.