In early April a Moroccan company, Managem, announced that its Bakoudou-Manigma gold mine, in the south-east of the country, would begin production in July. The mine is now expected to cost around US$35m, with annual production of gold estimated at 1.2-1.4 tonnes/year. According to the former mines minister, Julien Nkoghé Bekalé, the project-which has taken some five years to reach contract stage-will create 178 direct jobs. The mine will also contribute to some extent to the goal of economic diversification, providing sources of growth alternative to the oil sector. However, the project is fairly small in scale and will not help to break the economy's more general dependence on the extraction and exportation of primary commodities. Nonetheless, gold offers some insulation at least from the strong cyclicality of most industrial commodities.