Why the poor performance of the gold miners? Actually, there are several
reasons. Some of the companies are impacted by only one or two of the factors,
while some, the less lucky ones, are burdened by all of them. The main factors that
need to be mentioned are CAPEX overruns, growing production costs,
environmental constraints and problems with permitting, governments wanting a
bigger share of the pie, and political instability, as well as declining reserves and a
chronic lack of new “major discoveries”.