The Ethiopian Minerals Development S.C (EMD) announced that it had earned 341.64 million birr from the sale of minerals at local and international markets last fiscal year, up by 177 percent from the previous fiscal year's revenue.

About 98 percent of the revenue was obtained from the sale of tantalum while the balance was generated from the sale of industrial minerals and services, Girmachew Asfaw, senior planner of the company, said.

EMD owns and manages the Kenticha Tantalum mine and it produces and exports tantalum concentrate from the Kenticha mine.  

Stratex International, the AIM-listed gold miner, reported that it had seen promising results from its current drilling programme at the Megenta hot spring epithermal gold prospect, in the Afar region of Ethiopia.

The company said that it had intersected a broad near-surface zone of 43.55 m grading at 0.67 g/t gold at Hole MG-DD-10 and promising grab samples have also been collected from the Akehil prospect about 9 km away from Megenta.

The Ministry of Mines announced Tuesday that it had secured more than 509 million dollars from the mining sector during in the last fiscal year.

The amount was secured from gold, tantalum and gemstone producing companies and traditional miners, Sinknesh Ejjigu, Minister of Mines, said.

It was reported in July that the Ministry of Mines had collected 104 million birr in royalty fees 98 million birr of which was paid by MIDROC Gold.

Allana Potash Corp. announced that it had awarded an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment Study (ESIA) on its Ethiopia potash project to Environmental Resources Management (ERM).

The ESIA is scheduled to be completed around August 2012 and will form an integral part of the feasibility study the company is planning to initiate shortly.

ERM has offices in 40 countries around the world and Allana's project will be coordinated out of South Africa.

Samples from the drill core are being processed for analysis.

Ethiopian Potash Corp announced yesterday that it had completed drilling five holes with total drilling through 1,000 metres to date of the planned 15,000 metre diamond drill programme on its 481km² Danakil Project, in Ethiopia.

The holes were drilled along the western edge of the Danakil and targeted the on strike continuation of the Musley potash deposit. All of the holes intersected the regional Danakil Potash Formation and potash mineralization.