Welcome to Annual General Meeting for 2020 for B2Gold. Today, we're going to walk through the formal portion of the presentation. First, all of the requirements the regulatory requirements, etcetera, and talk about the voting, the share voting, etcetera. And our Chairman, Bob Cross, was unable to be here today. His son is graduating from University in California.
So that's a pretty legit reason. So he sends his vest and I will chair this portion being. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Clive Johnson, President, Chief Executive Officer, Director and Founder of V2Gold. It is my pleasure to welcome you to call to order the 2021 Annual General Special Meeting of the shoulders of each of Goldcorp.
I think I said 2020 before. In order to comply with the provincial health orders relating to the COVID-nineteen pandemic, we are hosting a meeting through this virtual platform accessible to all our shareholders who have followed the procedure described in the information circular for the meeting to participate, submit questions and vote regardless of physical location. Please ensure you remain connected to the Internet during the course of this meeting. I will act as Chair of this meeting and I appoint Roger Richer, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Secretary of the Company and Founder. 2 actors recording Secretary of this meeting and Anita Bassi of Computershare Investor Services to act as scrutineer for this meeting.
Also present for the meeting today are my fellow directors, Robert Gayton, Jerry Korpin, Mungani Mitch Shishi, Kevin Bullock, George Johnson, Robin Wiseman and Leanne Kelly. The other officers of the company attending the meetings today include Mike Cinnamon, Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer Roger O'Shea, who I mentioned Tom Garrigan, Senior Vice President, President of Exploration and Founder Dennis Stansbury, Senior Vice President of Engineering and Project Evaluations founder Bill Lytle, Senior Vice President of Operations Ian MacLean, Vice President, Investor Relations and Founder Dale Craig, President of Operations Edward Bartz, Vice President of Taxation and External Reporting Victor King, Vice President of Exploration Ryan Scott, Vice President of Geology and Technical Services John Rahala, Vice President of Metallurgy and from Ottawa, Neil Reeder, Vice President of Government Relations Dana Rogers, Vice President of Finance Randy Reichardt, Vice President of Operations and Randall Chapman, Vice President, Associate General Counsel. Now for the business of the meeting. Notice of this meeting was filed and the notice calling this meeting together with the information circular and proxy form was mailed to the shareholders on May 11, 2021. I received a copy of the declaration attesting to the publication and mailing, and the recording secretary will arrange for the declaration to be annexed to the minutes of this meeting.
These minutes will be available for inspection by any registered shareholder. I propose that we waive reading the notice of meeting unless anyone specifically requests that it be read. The recording secretary has notified me that the quorum is present. Notice having been given in accordance with the articles and the quorum being present, I declare the meeting property constituted for the transaction of business and I direct the report of the scrutineer be annexed to the minutes of this meeting. I propose that we deal first with all of the routine business requirements and then terminate the formal meeting, carry on in a less formal manner by way of an opportunity for questions from registered shareholders and proxy holders about the company's activities and operations.
As this is a virtual meeting, I would like to set out a few rules for the orderly conduct of the meeting. Questions in respect of a motion can be submitted by any registered shareholder duly appointed proxy holder using the message icon at the top of the virtual interface. When reading out a question, I will note the name of the registered shareholder or proxy holder submitting the question. In order to deal with all questions in a timely fashion questions of a similar nature will be answered once and duplicative questions will not receive a response. Questions on the formal meeting items will be addressed as each item is tabled.
It would be appreciated if questions and comments of a general nature were deferred until the question period. If we are unable to address your general question during that time, a representative of B2Gold will reach out to you following the meeting. Voting on all matters at this meeting will be conducted by electronic ballot. To allow sufficient time for voting, polls for all matters will be open following these introductory remarks and closed at the end of the meeting. Momentarily, you will see the ballot open on the virtual interface requesting you to start registering your votes.
For any motions duly brought before the meeting, not included in the circular, the polls for such matters will be opened and closed as I deem necessary or desirable for the orderly and expeditious conduct of the meeting. I remind you that only registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders who have properly logged in with their control numbers or user name, we'll be able to see on the screen all motions being brought forth at this meeting, and will be asked to vote on each business item. I remind you that if you are a registered shareholder and you have already voted by proxy, you do not need to vote again. If you plan to vote at the meeting, you may choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait to cast your vote until after an item discussed. Once discussion on all items of business before the virtual meeting is concluded, I will give registered shareholders and duly appointed proxy holders one final opportunity enter the votes on the open polls if they haven't already done so, and then declare voting closed on all resolutions.
To vote, simply click on your choice for or withhold or against as applicable. Confirmation message will appear to show your vote has been received. To change your vote, simply change your selection. When the poll closes, the votes submitted on each resolution item will be recorded through the virtual meeting platform totals in favor or against or withheld. As applicable for each resolution item will be tallied once the voting is completed.
Once the polls have closed, I will report on the outcome of the motions. The final results of the polls will be reported in the scrutineers report will be posted on our SEDAR profile. The first item of business is the presentation to shareholders of the annual consolidated financial statements of the company for the year ended December 31, 2020, and the auditor's report on the financial statements. The financial statements were mailed to the shareholders on April 28, 2021 and are available on SEDAR. Extra copies of the statements are available to shareholders upon request.
2 representatives of the auditor and attending are attending the meeting today. If registered shareholders or proxy holders have any questions for the auditor, Len Wadsworth and Melanie Matthews PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP chartered accountants are available to respond. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP chartered accountants are available to respond. The next item of business is to set the number of directors.
Mr. Chair, my name is Roger Roche, and I am registered shareholder. And I move that the number of directors be set at 9.
Are there any questions or discussion on the motion? If there are no or as there are no questions or discussion, I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion. And at the scrutiny report, the results. If you haven't already cast your vote, please cast your vote now. The next item of business is the election of Directors.
The 9 persons proposed by management for election are listed in the circular. All of them have indicated their willingness service directors for the ensuing year. No nominations other than those proposed by management have been received in accordance with the company's advanced notice policy and accordingly, management's nominees for election are the only persons permitted to be nominated for election. Could I please have nominations for management's proposed directors?
Mr. Chair, I nominate the following persons for election as directors. Clive Johnson, Robert Cross, Robert Gayton, Gerry Carpin, Leanne Kelly, Bongani Antucci, Kevin Bullock, George Johnson and Robin Wiseman.
I would ask for a motion that the 9 persons nominated be elected as Directors of the company to hold office until the termination of the next Annual General Meeting of Shareholders or until their successors are elected or appointed. I shall move. I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the Scrutiny Report and that the Scrutiny Report the results. You haven't already cast your vote, please cast your vote now. The auditor of the company is PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Accountants.
Management proposes that it be reappointed until the next Annual General Meeting. May I now have a motion that the auditors be reappointed and that the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor. As there are no questions or discussions, I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutiny report the results. If you haven't already cast your vote, please cast your vote now. The next item of business is to consider and if deemed advisable, pass a resolution ratifying, approving and confirming the company's amended advance notice policy.
The background behind this motion, a summary of the amendments to the advance notice policy and the proposed form of resolution are set out on Page 10 and 11 and Appendix C of the circular. The Board of Directors recommends that shareholders vote for a resolution ratifying, improving and confirming the amended advance notice policy. To take effect, the resolution must be approved by majority of the votes cast through the virtual meeting platform or by proxy. May I have a motion to ratify, proven confirm the amended advance notice policy in the form of the resolution set out on Page 11 of the circular. I shall move.
Are there any questions or discussion on the motion? As there are no questions or discussion, I direct that the pool be conducted on the motion and that the scrutiny report and results, if you haven't already cast your vote, please cast your vote now. The next item of business is to consider and if deemed advisable, pass a resolution ratifying, approving and confirming all unallocated options, rights and other entitlements issuable pursuant to the 2018 Stock Option Plan. The background behind this motion and the proposed form of resolution are set out on Pages 11 to 14 and Appendix B of the circular. The Board of Directors recommends that shareholders vote for the Stock Option Plan Resolution.
To take effect, the resolution must be approved by a majority of the votes cast through the virtual meeting platform or by proxy. May I have a motion to ratify, approve and confirm all unallocated options, rights other entitlements issue pursuant to the 2018 Stock Option Plan in the form of resolution set out on Page 14 the circular. I so will. Are there any questions or discussion with respect to the resolution? As there are no questions or discussion, I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutineer report the results.
If you haven't already cast your vote, please cast your vote now. The next item of business is to consider and if deemed advisable, pass a resolution on a non binding advisory basis accepting the company's approach to executive compensation. Background behind this motion and the proposed form the non binding advisory resolution are set out on Page 14 of the circular. In addition, a detailed discussion of the company's executive compensation program is set forth in the Executive Compensation section of the circular. The Board of Directors recommend shareholders vote for the resolution on a non binding advisory basis, accepting the company's approach to executive compensation.
As this is an advisory vote, the results will not be binding upon the Board. However, the Board will take the results of the vote into account as appropriate when considering future executive compensation policies, procedures and decisions. May I have a motion to approve on a non binding advisory basis the form of the resolution set out on Page 14 of the circular, accepting the company's approach 2 executive compensation. I shall move. Sorry, are there any questions or discussions with respect to this resolution?
As there are no questions or discussion, I direct that a poll be conducted on the motion and that the scrutineer report the results. If you haven't already, cast your vote. Please cast your vote now. That concludes the matters to be voted on for those registered shareholders and proxy holders who have not voted on all of the resolutions for which the polls remain open. Please do so now as I will shortly close all such polls.
The polls on all such resolutions are now closed. I direct to Scrutinyer to provide a report on the results of the polls. I now have the preliminary results, scrutineers report for the matters set forth in the circular. Based on these preliminary results, scrutiny preliminary results of Scutoneer's report, I declare that the numbers of Directors of the company has been set at 9. As the majority of the proxies deposited for the meeting have been voted for, the election of each of the directors nominated the 9 persons nominated have been elected as directors of the company.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Accountants has been reappointed as the auditor until the next Annual General Meeting, and the directors be authorized to fix the remuneration of the auditor. The resolution to ratify, approve and confirm the amended advance notice policy has been carried. The resolution to ratify, approve and confirm the unallocated options, rights and other entitlements issue pursuant to the company's 2018 stock option plan has been carried. And the resolution on a non binding advisory basis accepting the company's approach to executive compensation has been carried. After the meeting upon receipt of the final scrutineers report on the polls conducted during this meeting, I direct the recording secretary to attach the report of the scrutineer the minutes of the meeting.
You're supposed to read out the numbers? You don't have to if you don't want. Sorry? Okay. That might be kind of fun.
Okay. The numbers of directors, 99.83 percent of the votes, we voted for. For the directors themselves, Kevin Bullock, 86 percent for Robert Cross, 75.97 percent for Robert Gayden, 74.92 for Mr. Clive Johnson, 94.91 percent George Johnson, 86.51% Ms. Leanne Kelly, 92.7 percent Mr.
Jerry Corfin, 74.9 percent Mr. Buggani, Ms. Shishi, 86.06 percent and Ms. Robin Wiseman, 93.5 appointment of the auditors received 99% of the votes. And the reapproval of the Stock Option Plan received 90 3 percent of the votes.
Advisory vote on the executive compensation received 93.8 percent for votes. What was the total number of shares that were voted? 75 percent, Clay. 75% of the shares held in the P2Gold were voted at the Annual General Meeting, and we thank our shareholders. That's a remarkable number.
The scrutineers tell me that typically somewhere between 35% and maybe 40% for a public company. I think that's great. I mean, we try we pride ourselves on our transparency with our shareholders. We work for the shareholders, great respect for our shareholders as the owners of the company. And that's a very good result and the humbling result.
So thank you to the shareholders for your confidence in the Board of Directors and the management of the company. All of the business for which this meeting was called has been completed following termination of the formal part of the meeting. Registered shareholders and proxy holders who wish to ask questions or make comments will be invited to do so. May I have a motion to terminate the meeting? I shall move.
Based on the preliminary results, I declare the motion carried on the formal part of this meeting is now terminated. I now invite registered shareholders or proxy holders who wish to ask questions or make comments to do so through the virtual platform. Are there any further questions, there will be a Q and A session at the end of the informal presentation as well. There being no further questions in the formal part of the meeting having previously been terminated, I declare the meeting terminated. Thank you for your attendance since they're safe during these unprecedented times.
Just going to wait a few seconds, so all they can set up for the presentation that's coming up now. Okay, we're good to go. All right. Well, thank you for attending the formal part of the meeting. Now we can talk about some exciting things that have happened in Beach of Gold in 2020 and so far in 2021.
Today, we're going to you're going to hear from me with an initial overview at a very high level of what's happened in the company and then you're going to hear a little bit of me talking about the state of the market and VitorGold shares today in the past year and a half. I think it's important to talk about that. And also, I'm going to give you a little bit of an idea of what's coming up next in terms of strategy and development of the company looking forward. A lot of this stuff tends to get buried at the end of the presentation. So I thought today, we get some of this upfront because it's after a couple of hours, some of that stuff doesn't necessarily resonate perhaps as much as it should.
So I'm going to present that overview and then Mike Cinnamon, Senior VP Finance and CFO is going to take us through the financial results. And then remotely, Bill Lytle is going to give us a live feed, Senior VP Operations on what's happening operationally in the company and talk about some of our development projects. And then Tom Garrigan to my right, Senior VP Exploration is going to take us through some very exciting exploration projects we have. You all know we've had a tremendous history of discovering gold, both in the terms of brownfields exploration around existing mines, continue to increase resources, reserves and extend the mine life the mines, but also earlier stage grassroots discoveries. Tom has got some really exciting projects and opportunities that I won't see sundar that we some of them we've been working on for, I don't know, 15 years or so, staying in touch with people in Uzbekistan and places like that.
So exploration has always been a very important part of the success of B2Gold and BIMAGOLD before that. And then Bill is going to get back up and talk about ESG, which of course is a very hot topic in the world today and a lot of institutional investors are looking to make sure that companies are being responsible in those critical areas looking forward in climate change, etcetera, and what we're doing socially, environmentally. I'm really proud to say that we think we are on the cutting edge of those technologies and have been for years. We were doing this kind of stuff before it had fancy titles. And now a lot of people are doing it because it's acquired by shareholders and by countries and governments and governance.
We've been doing it for a long time, for decades because it's the right thing to do. This is a disclaimer. This is a lot of words that says really what it says is that certain things I'm going to say and the other gentleman might say may be subject to change. See, you could have just said it in those words, I think, but I'm not aware. So this map just shows you our projects around the world.
Obviously very international company based here in Vancouver and many of you of course as Disney shareholders will be quite familiar with the journey that we've been on for the last 13 years since we created this company 0. So we're going to hear from today about the 3 mines, Masbate in the Philippines, Ojikoto in Namibia and of course, Fekola and Mali, we're going to talk about some of the development projects, Kiena Faso and Chiaca and the Gramalote approach in Colombia. Also, we're going to talk about exploration in places like Uzbekistan and Finland and elsewhere, there's few other places we're working on around the world looking for world class targets that I promised Tom I wouldn't divulge the locations just yet. Competition tends to see our success and then immediately follow attempting to replicate it. So some of the highlights for this year, and once again, I don't want this to be really repetitive.
So I'm just going to be kind of a high level view of some of these things. But mean, 1st and foremost, despite the challenges of COVID, we were able to record in 2020 our 12th year in a row of record annual gold production. This last year, over 1,000,000 ounces of gold. That's a remarkable accomplishment and a remarkable story of perhaps unprecedented growth in the gold mining industry. But and I will come back at the end of this and remind me if I forget it at the bottom of the slide.
I want to come back and talk about COVID a little bit more and Bill is going to give us quite a bit about how we've dealt with it. It's been quite remarkable. So we continue to be a very low, one of the lowest cost gold producers in the world are sustaining costs, the most the more important number is $7.88 an ounce, one of the lowest. A record annual consolidated revenues, quite an astounding number of US1.8 billion dollars Record annual consolidated cash flows from operating activities I like the $950,000,000 or $950,000,000 consolidated cash flow in 2020. And we repaid the balance you'll hear from Mike of our revolving credit facility, with a great group of bankers who believed in us in the earlier days, when there was some risk involved in the industry we're in and construction and those things, they've been very well they've been well rewarded and standing by willing and able to lend us money as appropriate to continue to grow the company.
Very strong financial position, I think around $500,000,000 at the end of the year in cash and basically debt free with the exception of some mining trucks like that one that are on equipment leases that are paid over 4 or 5 years, which is fairly typical of our industry. So that's a remarkable place to be today. And that has allowed us to pay one of the highest yielding dividends in the gold mining industry. Gold mining companies are not famous for paying dividends. More and more people now are gold companies are better run than they've been.
And they're watching the bottom line a lot more than waiting to see if gold goes up and saves their ass or if they find a lot more all of a sudden. Suddenly, the gold mining companies more and more are being run like a business. I've always argued that we should run it like a business. We should need gold to go higher or to suddenly find way more ounces of gold to make our acquisitions make sense or to make our business make sense. And I think our strategies worked rather well to put it suddenly, I suppose.
So the dividend was increased to $0.04 a share because of the dramatic increase in cash from operations. And that yields about 4%, which is one of the higher in the I guess it's the high 3s probably right now. So that's been great. And the idea going forward strategically is to continue to do what we've done. And I believe most of our shareholders love the dividend.
Who doesn't? I kind of like it too. But at the end of the day, our goal is to continue to increase the dividend as appropriate, but only using a portion of our cash from operations to use it for that purpose to reward the shareholders for their support. But the rest of the money, we want to be able to grow the company. And yes, we could tap into the banks.
We also want a good solid cash from operations. So we can continue to do things like our $65,000,000 exploration budget this year. And if you look at our history in exploration, dramatic success in terms of the money we spent on exploration to the ounces that we find around the mines or elsewhere. So we want that flexibility and want the ability to use a combination perhaps of debt and some equity when sorry, debt and some cash, maybe a bit of equity, but when we build and expand our minds. And we're going to continue to advance our development and exploration projects for future growth.
And I think it's important to remember what got us here after creating this company 13 years ago and they got us here as a very disciplined approach to acquisitions and aspiration to allow this pretty much unprecedented growth. So I want to circle back a little bit and talk about COVID from my perspective, I guess, the corporate perspective and Bill will give us some more details. But we're really proud of the way that our employees responded to COVID and all of our stakeholders and the governments and where we work. And it's been a lot of work to maintain and to actually reach a record gold production and expand the Fekola Mill during COVID. And I think it's a real testament to the culture and the strategy what this company is all about.
Because the countries which we work, which we mine, they don't have a large safety net and cash or the ability in the COVID crisis to throw massive amounts of money at it as some countries do. So it was really critical. These the three countries, the Philippines, Namibia and Mali declared that mining was one of the essential businesses. And therefore, the priority was to allow us to continue the mine if we could do it safely. And this is where I think the culture kicks in because people talk a lot social license, earning the license to operate by doing the right thing socially and environmentally, etcetera.
Well, we're very proud of the reaction to and the realization of just how strong our social license is in the countries in which we work. Because we all have something in common, the employees, the governments, the communities where we work and the company and its directors and shareholders, which was to continue to mine as long as we could do it safely. So there was a great trust between those groups, the employees, the governments, local and federal, and the company. That's very rewarding because we've preached every year and we talk about it all the time on-site and here, everywhere we talk about treating people the Beachy Gold way, which is an extension of the Canadian culture, I believe. And that is treating people with fairness, respect and transparency.
And the social license we have today and the trust that we've seen during COVID really makes us feel very good about the social license and about the culture. So I think the remarkable and Bill can talk more detail, but there's lots of stuff on the website. But we every country, every mine, of course, is different and has its different challenges mining and everything else, but also has these different challenges in terms of COVID. So we took a different approach in each country and worked very closely as we always do, I think with the local people, how can we help not only the employees at the mine, but the communities in which we work generally as you know our track record for that, but also now specifically opposite COVID. And you'll see that we really stepped up here in Vancouver as well to support groups that were really hurting a lot during COVID.
So I think that's really to me, that's been a very rewarding for all of us, I would say. Very rewarding to see the payback in when you deal with the right thing, which is treat people with fairness, respect and transparency, the payback isn't necessarily financial. I'm talking more about the payback and the it's been a tiresome experience. It's been very difficult, but it's been very rewarding at the same time. I usually show the slide once or twice because it's so such a good slide in presentations.
But I just want to just remind us of what we're all about and what we've done here in the last over years. And that is a dramatic growth, perhaps unprecedented industry when we started this company in 20 10, I guess it was or 11, growing the gold production from 0, the market cap from 0 to where we are today last year over 1,000,000 ounces of gold. Now looking at the slide, I think it would be kind of hard to imagine that pretty much the same group of individuals combined with additional highly qualified individuals wouldn't aspire to continue this growth. And that's what I talked a bit about earlier about our desire to, yes, pay a dividend, but also continue using some of our cash from operations to continue to grow. So we're always looking for opportunities and we'll talk more about that in a little bit.
But one of the things that's made this so successful, I know I've talked about this before, but it's probably worth repeating a little bit. That's the management of political risk. What we've done all over the world and the BIMA days in places like Russia and South Africa and Chile. And it carried on into the B2Gold years. I think one of the great reasons for our success in our discipline and acquisitions and what we do.
But it's also managing political risk and really understanding societies and cultures and learning how to work with them in their best interest. And I want to talk a little bit about Mali and I know Bill is talk about it. But there's been some political upheaval in Mali as many people have seen in the news. Fortunately, it's been, for the very most part, non violent. And we've Mali is a country that has been very good for gold mining and gold mining has been very good for Mali for decades.
You can talk to Randgold that have been there for decades successfully now owned by Barrick or Barrick took over Randgold and many other companies, foreign companies that have been successful. The government of Mali historically has been a really good government to work with. If you look at the success of our Fekola mine and what we've done in Fekola in the short years, expanding the mill twice and making it a great joint venture for ourselves and the government that owns 20% and being held up by the President at the mine opening as the kind of company that they want everyone else in gold mining to emulate, B2Gold experience Fekola. So we're watching the government change closely. The government's variations are up, seem to realize the importance of gold mining in Mali.
It's a very fragile economy pre COVID. So obviously, clearly, they need business and they need foreign investment. And as I said, there's been a tremendous track record of Malian governments respecting the rule of law in their country as we've respected the rule of law in their country and everywhere else. So recently we've got into a bit of a dispute on an exploration license 20 kilometers north of Fekola, I mean, in Coto part of the Ataconda region. And we spent a lot of money there, dollars 27,000,000 in fact, discovering more gold.
And we think there's tuning as you'll hear to track some of that ore down to Fekola in the near term, maybe the 3rd Q2 of next year to actually increase throughput at the mine and increase gold production, increasing profits and revenue for ourselves and the government of Mali. So recently, there was we applied for a routine what we thought routine extension of the exploration license. Once again, Mike will talk more about this. But there was some, I guess, a politically correct term. Was there might have been some administrative errors in the process, which the license was actually awarded to someone else.
We think that was against the laws of the country and we're looking to work with the government to resolve the dispute and get what we think we are legally entitled to as our shareholders and as our partner, the government of Mali and the local people in the communities where we will generate all these jobs. The only place that they are for Minicola should be milled biz at the Fekola Mill. So we've done this very well for many, many years in many different situations. I remember the reaction when I announced in 1998 that BMO is going into Russia. I mean, everyone said, well, that's crazy.
The 2 most negative investments in the world
are
gold in Russia at the time. Gold was $300 an ounce. And I said, yes, it's a double constrained play. 1 of them is going to get better. We went and we're hugely successful, as you know, in Russia and then many other countries because of the commitment to understanding culture and political risk.
And I think one of the reasons we do so well with this with any crisis like COVID or anything else, we've been through earthquakes, we've been through typhoons, we've been through all sorts of things, government changes and all sorts of things. But it's our ability to solve problems. We're problem solvers. We're not looking for excuses not to do things. We're looking for reasons to do things.
We've done that for 35 years. So we're very good at crisis management problem solving. COVID is another great example of that. So I just want to mention, I know the guys will talk about, but just really the commitment of our employees is just remarkable to me. I think it's 4,300 employees worldwide, and most of them direct employees.
We want everyone to have a shirt on it that says, Bichagold and maybe our Bichagold, Mali or Masbate and talk about people stepping up at a difficult time during COVID. That's been remarkable. So I just really want to thank all of our employees for a tremendous effort. So I'll let you couple of these slides and then I'll let the other guys talk about exciting details of things we're doing. But I just want to talk a little bit about the market.
We had a we finally were recognized, I think, for what we've done in terms of the price of our shares after me banging on the table for years going, this is not fair. And we weren't reflecting the value of what we created, including looking at cash flow and everything else. It was stubborn and the market was slow because of because we're so contrarian, we were building the Fekola mine and the Ojo Fekola mine were very, very few companies in the world building minds because shareholders hated growth because of the failings of others. But we persevered and carried on. And we saw a tremendous, obviously, rise in our stock price in the middle of last year, we just nudged CAD10 there, that will be a CAD10 1,000,000,000 market cap.
Obviously, the market's come off since then, but despite that, we continue to perform tremendously well. I sometimes think that the gold price when it sort of touched 2,000 briefly that recently, you think that gold price has gone down to $1200 or something. When you look at the amount of money we're making at $1800 or almost $1900 gold, it's remarkable. Gold is very fickle and gold investors are very fickle. So I think we're trailing a little bit behind our company and some of the others and where today.
But still, when you look at this compared to the gold index and the gold price for 2020, we're up 29%, up way more than that in the middle of the summer, as I but still up 29%. And when you look at the DXG Index, they're up 18%. GDX Index, sorry, the gold price was 16% on the GTX and Exelop 13%. So we clearly outperformed and I expect us to continue to and perhaps more dramatically as we go along. It's not just about our gold prices, it's about what you do.
This is another good slide that Ian had put together, this is pretty dramatic. And this talks about on the left hand side, V2Gold, the operating cash flow growth from 2017 to 2020. We grew cash flow from operations 5 13% to that 9 50 number we talked about. And not to this is in no way disparaging of any of our competitors, but if you look at the list of and these are there's a lot of good companies here that I respect. But we clearly outperformed the sector partly because of our strategy and our stubbornness about being contrarian and look how well it worked.
This is also very interesting net cash change. So once again, I'm a lot of my time or thinking is about strategy. And the strategy over many years, we're very proud of how that's worked. So not that many years ago when we wanted to build Fekola, the our stock price was way down a lot more, but we were getting hammered because we have the audacity to want to build a gold mine given our successful track record. But we went to we didn't want to dilute our shareholders in a big way because of the low share price.
So we took on some debt, but a reasonable amount of debt. Mike did a tremendous job and his team on that. And so that's why we showed a deficit of $474,000,000 in December 17 because we spent all the money on Fekola to build the mine. Well, Fekola was such a remarkable success and since expanded twice that we've actually turned it around completely and gone $474,000,000 deficit to $513,000,000 net cash change. So that's almost $1,000,000,000 swing.
That's a great strategy. It was not common to be building mines at that time. We didn't do it to shareholders. We used a sensible amount of debt, which is now repaid. So now we're debt free.
It's great to have strategy and it's really great when it works. This is just the 5 year share price performance. Once again, pretty dramatic outperformance of the indexes were up 182%. And as you can see, we were up way higher than that in the middle of last year. But if you compare us to the gold price, which is up 57%, the GXD Index 70 2% and GX GTX 74% dramatic outperformance despite the correction in the market across the Golden Sector quite recently.
Finally, this one exciting stuff, not that this isn't. But the strategy really is more of the same, just to maintain our highest standards of responsible mining, CSR, ESG,
one
of the world leaders in health, safety, environment, the safety of our employees. Darren Perry leads that team. It's been remarkable. You're going to hear some statistics that are quite incredible. And don't forget, this is all a time when we've been growing this company as well.
So the ability to do to meet these highest standards of ESG CSR safety responsibility during a time of dramatic growth over a number of years. That to me is just I think that's something that we should all be very proud of, all of our workers. And we're going to continue to maximize the profitability of our mines, of course, working with our great teams around the world and also financially, of course, remain strong, etcetera. And we're going to continue to grow. And we're looking at and you'll hear more about Gramalote, which unfortunately, the Gramalote feasibility work that was being done, we looked at the results recently of the work to date.
And while it was a positive project and some would argue that we move forward with developing it, the economics are positive. We feel there's a better project there. And it seems that our partner EGA might agree. So we're looking to do a lot more work now and more drilling to find more ounces to divide the capital cost and we're also looking at various ways to decrease the capital expenditure currently estimated at around $900,000,000 but we think there's a project here and we've got work to do. But we think by Q1 of next year, we expect to release a feasibility study.
And you hear a bit more from some of these other projects as well. And finally, M and A, we get asked this question a lot. How are you going to do M and A? Are you going to merge other companies? You've taken over smaller companies in the past with great success.
Are you going to do it? Again, well, we're always looking for things, but we have this problem. It's not really a problem, but we have an issue. And that is that we are so determined to be responsible in our any of our acquisitions, which has kept us out of trouble. Unfortunately, the synergy saw a lot of bad acquisitions over the last, let's say, 5 years ago to 15 years ago, it's gotten better.
But we're not going to acquire anything assuming gold is going higher or we're going to find goal to justify the purchase price of acquisition. So we're going to bring that discipline. But other special situations like we had in the Philippines, where we can bring our expertise to bear to make a mine, a much better mine, things like that, but also looking at opportunities. The cheapest ounces will always be the ones you find. So exploration is going to be, as I mentioned, a huge part of it.
I think that's most of what I wanted to share with you rather than have the big wrap up at the end. And I think it's a sound strategy. The record seems to prove that. And we're very excited about the future for Beachy Gold and we're very much looking forward to getting out of this COVID-nineteen challenge, which has been extraordinary for everyone around the world. So there are better times ahead.
Sometimes it doesn't feel like it because COVID goes on and on and on. But there are better times ahead and not too far down the road. Hopefully, we can have next year, the more traditional AGM with a great turnaround and a big party somewhere as well. So that's what I wanted to share with you, I'm going to pass it over to Mike now. Mike's thinking, God, he said he was going to be short.
Thanks, Clive. I'm going to give you a financial overview, although it's fair to say that Clive's given you a fair amount of it already. I think as he's getting older, he's learning to embrace his inner account. That's good to see.
I can't
hear you.
That's good to see. So, going to give you a brief reminder of what 2020's results look like. Frankly, they're not difficult results to talk about. We have a fantastic year in 2020. And just to remind you as well and give you quick picture of how we see 2021 and how we think it's going to turn out through the year.
So firstly, 2020, record annual production, just over 1,040,000 ounces, that's right at the upper end of our guidance range The 1,000,000 to 1,050,000 ounces. And as Clive described, the remarkable thing about that is that's in a COVID year, that's in a pandemic When a lot of the world shut down and struggled mining and our operations were recognized by the governments in the countries where we Very important key industries. And we were able to hit that upper end of our guidance, which I think is a tremendous achievement, much to kudos to everyone at site And of course, everyone here who helps support those operations. If you look at that performance, I think it's strong performance, like I said, All the sites, but in particular Fekola. Fekola, we saw the Fekola expansion come to fruition in 2020.
Firstly, Bringing on a major part of the expansion fleet earlier in the year so that we can move more material and then also with completion of the Fekola Mill expansion in the Q3. So that allowed us to move more material, put more stuff through the mill and access higher grades, better grades upfront. And so we We saw Fekola had a phenomenal performance, more than 620,000 ounces. And that translated into the results on the cost side as well. So cash costs, dollars 4.23 per ounce, right again, right at the lower end of our guidance range of $4.15 to 4 And as well as the production, the Greek production in site, what also fed into that was we saw lower fuel costs.
As you know, the global fuel prices dipped In the earlier stages of the pandemic in 2020, so weaker Namibian dollar, so we had some foreign exchange gains there. And also just some of the mine sequencing changes that occurred in order to react to having to deal with some of the COVID challenges at sites help to reduce those costs during the year. All in sustaining costs were $7.88 per ounce sold. Again, that's at the low end of a range of 7.80 820 and really for the same reasons as we saw on the cash cost side. Plus we saw a deferral or Some stripping costs that just weren't incurred during 2020, again as we reacted to those mining sequencing changes To react to COVID.
And if you look at what did that translate into, well, firstly, on the sales side, Rackcor Gold revenues, dollars 1,800,000,000 Just like saying that number, it's a good number. And then on the cash flow operating cash flow side, dollars 951,000,000 that's almost double what that number was In 2019, and we had a very good year in 2019 to start with. So 2020, phenomenal year. That level of operating cash flow allowed us to complete the capital programs that we did have on-site and let us pay a very competitive dividend That we increased through the year up to now $0.16 per share U. S.
Annualized for the year. And We were able to pay down, as Clive described, any outstanding balances on our revolver and finish the year in very good shape. So now just give you a quick idea of how we see 2021 shaping up for our budget, and we announced this earlier in the year. On the production side, guidance range $970,000 to $10,301,030,000 ounces. So again, around about that 1,000,000 ounce level and pretty consistent with what we saw this year, a little lower but not much, pretty close.
And When you hear from Bill a little later on in the presentation, you'll hear how we think we can see ourselves around that level for On average, for somewhere in the next 5 years with what we see at our sites and what we think we can bring on. So very good solid number and a sort of number that we see recurring for a while. I should mention on the production side for 2021, it's a tale of 2 hats in the year. We do have fairly significant stripping programs to be incurred both at Fekola to strip Phases 5 and 6 and also at the Ojikoto mine to strip Wolfshag Phase 3. We'll access those sort of higher grade ores more in the second half of the year.
And that means that that approximate 1,000,000 ounce number per guidance for 2021, that's weighted quite significantly in the second half, 400,000 ounces in the first half, 600,000 ounces in the second. And we also will see that in terms of the cash costs and all in sustaining costs that we see for the year. Overall for the year $500,000,000 to $5.40 on the cash operating cost side, dollars 8.70 to $9.10 per ounce on the all in sustaining cost side. We will see slightly higher costs in the first half of the year and then they'll come down significantly in the second half of the year as production increases. But overall, those cost ranges per ounce, very competitive when you look at our how we stack up against, I guess, our contemporaries.
Gold revenues for the year, we think will be about $1,700,000,000 just slightly lower than the current year. We got slightly lower production. This assumes an $1800 gold price. However, and as you know, the price is higher than that has been for a while now. So that provides That's a good sign.
And then what we see on the cash flow from operating activities. This year, we got $630,000,000 forecast for the year, Again, at that $1800 gold price. And that has even more significant weighting in the second half. And there's a couple of reasons for that. One is, As I said on the production side, we'll have less ounces to sell in the first half of the year because we'll have lower production.
And also what we saw, We have some significant tax balances to pay in the Q2 that will end this June at the end of June now. And those relate to 2020 cash taxes and priority dividends mainly related to MALI. And they reflect we had a great year in 2020. The statutory Timing of the payment of those is in the Q2 of 2021. So we'll have about $140,000,000 that we'll have to pay down And basically in the Q2 that relates to 2020.
So overall, we had $146,000,000 cash flow from operations in Q1, we have we saw a significant cash flow from ops being generated in the Q2, but like I say, we'll have $140,000,000 to pay those tax obligations, priority dividend. And then we'll have approximately $500,000,000 of operating cash flows that we think we'll see come through in the second half of the year. So that was our guidance for the year. If you look at how are we looking Q1 wise? The only answer is we're progressing well, I think, against the budget in those guidance ranges.
We had just over 220,000 ounces in the Q1. That's about 9% higher than we budgeted. And again, it's a story of good production and good operations at all sites. Fekola, the mill throughput just continues to outperform. We had estimated for estimated stroke estimated, the mill throughput for 2021 at 7,750,000 tonnes.
It is a new mill expansion that we just put in. We're currently evaluating just how high it can go. In the Q1, we had a record almost 2,100,000 tonnes Through the mill, which is higher than we budgeted. At Masvady, we just continue to get better recovery materials than we have In the model right now coming through the mill, so that's excellent. And then Ojikoto.
Ojikoto just had very solid first quarter Across all areas. So that's going well, and I think we're well on track to meet our guidance range of 970,000 to 1,030,000 ounces. And then on the cost side, cash operating costs $609 per ounce produced. So higher than last year, whether you saw the outturn for last year. But as I mentioned, the costs are definitely weighted to the 1st two quarters of 2021.
But even at that $609 per ounce produced, that's 54 low per ounce lower than budget, and that's mainly driven by the higher production that we saw in Q1. Same story or even better story on the all in sustaining cost side, $9.32 per ounce sold, that's $146 lower than budget, and that's a function of those lower cash costs we just described, But also the timing with CapEx. Some of the CapEx that we thought we'd incur in the Q1 will actually be pushed out to a little later in the year. And then the other items here, I think we already talked about the revenue and then that $630,000,000 from operating cash flows for the year. Maybe just finally, just to describe, how does that leave us liquidity wise, I guess, balance ways.
Well, it leaves us in very good shape. Over $500,000,000 cash equivalents in the Bank at the end of the Q1, As Clive has mentioned in his detailed analysis of the finances, that's really the only debt outstanding. At the end of the Q1, were equipment loans related to our fleet, which is normal and also some property leases. So very good shape, net cash flow wise and debt wise. The whole amount of the revolver is currently available.
That's €600,000,000 the RCF and there's a €200,000,000 accordion feature to 2. So should any other banks want to come into the consortium, we could add another $200,000,000 to that $600,000,000 of available liquidity. And we very recently in fact, very recently today announced the cash dividend for the Q2 of another US0.04 dollars share of that $0.16 annualized per year. And that's somewhere in the low 3%. It's over 3% yield, Which again is very competitive at the high end if you look at our contemporary companies and the gold mining companies.
So It's a very solid dividend rate. Our intention is to maintain paying dividends at those rates and that will let us really complete our CapEx programs, complete extended exploration programs and all this exploration activity that we have around the world. And also allow us to plan for any development for projects as needed as we look forward. So that really that's a brief summary of the finances, fair to say that we're in good shape. And now I'm going to hand you over to Bill Lydall.
Bill is our Senior VP Ops and I guess like any good He's actually beaming in live from site at Fekola. And so we may need a second or 2 just to bring him online, but Bill will be with us very shortly. Thank you.
Okay. I hope you can hear me. I'm in West Africa right now. I'm at the Fekola site. I wanted to cover I have two sections tonight.
I want to start out with operations and then I think Tom is going to talk a little bit about exploration and then I'm going to come back and talk about ESG. Starting with operations, I want to start with the health and safety performance that we had for the year. Typically, you would try and improve year on year, but given COVID, we were kind of worried about what might happen given the fact that we couldn't get out to site and we couldn't really kind of drive some of the programs we've had. But I have to say That the sites themselves really went above and beyond and really despite the problems with COVID had an amazing year. If you look at Slide 21, this is a table which is put out by ICMM, What really compares us against all of our key competitors and what you see, I presented this last year as well and last year we were kind of in the middle of But this year, we're way out on the right hand side, almost at the very best for 2020.
And if you look at Q1 of 2021, you can see that so far, obviously, that not everybody's numbers are out. What you can see is that we would be an industry leader Really as far as the lost time injury frequency rate. And so what you see is really an amazing, amazing performance by site. And so the question begs, how do you really improve upon that? And so what we're really looking at going forward is, How do we get back to the basics?
How do we drive our numbers even lower by kind of doubling down on doing the basic things that you have Looking at the operational results, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this because certainly Clive hit upon it and Mike gave a lot of these numbers too. I think the key takeaway is last year when we were at the AGM, we were talking about how the sites had adapted to COVID and how really we had talked about potentially it wasn't For us, Sprint, it was more of a marathon. And now you can see, here we are over a year into it and the sites, As Clive alluded to, continue to perform day in and day out. For the entire year of 2020, all three of our sites, all three of our operational sites Exceeded guidance, but they didn't just exceed guidance in the sense that their ounces were up. They also continued to perform in all areas.
Talked about health and safety. We won some very prestigious awards on the CSR side, which I'll talk about during the SG section, we continued to develop projects, which is really kind of key to make sure as we come out of COVID That we've got a path forward and all of the sites continue to implement continuous improvement On all the sites, which I'll talk about as we go through this presentation. I'm on Slide 23 now. Just looking at what happened outside of the production as far as the development and all of these 5 topics here will be expanded upon in the coming slides. But think about this.
So during COVID, When it was almost impossible to travel, we expanded the Fekola Mill. We expanded it from 6,000,000 to 7,500,000 tonnes per annum. And we were always kind of cheeky about what that number was. Was it 7.5? Was it 8?
And what Our VP of Metallurgy, John Rolle was always saying was, listen, what we're talking about, you need to always tell people that we're talking about whatever we think the maximum is At the hardest ore type, we're really that plus 1,500,000 tonnes. So we came out in September of commissioning and We did a test to see where we can get to. And what we showed without much difficulty is that we could run above 8,000,000 tonnes per annum. And that's important as we go forward because what you'll see is that there's the potential now to increase the ounce profile of Fekola as we increase the throughput. And we were talking about this kind of 8.0.
And if you follow us at all in kind of Q1 of this year, you see that we're actually above that. And so now what is the number? And so what we haven't officially landed on a number, but the Certainly before budgets come on September, we think we're going to be significantly above 8 and probably closer to 8.5. So in association with that, the exploration group as part of a condemnation program a They identified a new resource, which is 500 meters west of the Fekola mine known as the Cardinal resource. That resource is now That has an inferred resource on it.
And we've made the decision because we want to get it out of the way, because ultimately we want to put a waste dump there. We've decided that we are going to mine that as an inferred resource right now. So we petitioned the government, received approval here in Mali To take a bulk sample, that bulk sample was approved and that bulk sample is now basically sitting on the ROM pad and getting ready to go into the mill. So We kind of promised it before Q2 and it looks like that's going to happen. We're also in the process now of putting a mine plan on that.
Randy Reichert, our VP of Operations is actually here with me and Molly, getting ready to submit that to the government. Because the Cardinal zone is located within our existing mine license area, within our existing permit, We don't have to do a full approval process. We have completed an ESIA and now we're just submitting the Mine plan, which would basically roll into our annual mine plan going forward. So we see in the second half of the year that we'll have the potential to start mining that. And certainly, we have the potential to add additional ounces, which we previously talked about into the Fekola life of mine for 2020 and going forward after that.
The Anaconda project, we're going to talk a good deal about that project. That project is part of the Mankoto license, which is currently under dispute. There's also a second license, which is within the Anaconda project and we'll talk about that more about that in just a couple of slides. At the Otjikoto mine, we had talked about potentially in 2020 developing the Wolfshag underground. This has the potential to significantly increase our ounce profile as we go through 2021 through 2020 So we'll talk about the success of that development, but we're also going to talk about the fact that the exploration group has identified A couple more very exciting areas where we continue to see the potential to not only increase the ounce profile, but potentially increase the life of mine there as well.
And then Clive alluded to the Gramalote project and there's a couple of slides really going into depth on this. So the Gramalote project, we basically We finished up the kind of the first step of looking at the feasibility study, which was based on some work that AGA had And as Clive said, we saw really the potential to kind of unshackle a project a little bit and see if there's a better way To engineer this and to do some additional drilling, so we've decided to optimize the existing feasibility and Put it out in Q1 of next year. Now if you go just Slide 24 just shows some pictures of what's happening at all of our sites. I'm not going to talk too much about that, but let's go to Slide 25. I talked a little bit about this in the introduction, continuous improvement, right?
Continuous improvement is what happens day to day on the mine site that really the public doesn't get to see, which really kind of drives our ounce profiles and make sure That we continue to meet our targets without having slip ups. And if you've looked at us over quarter on quarter on quarter on quarter, you'll see The operational team at all the sites, this is something they really work on and this is something that they're really proud of and the fact that every quarter they continue to make improvements and meet their quarterly targets. So if you look at Fekola mine, out here we've been doing things like a fleet management system. We constructed we finished construction of the heavy mining equipment workshop. We talked a little bit about a solar plant previously.
This is a 30 megawatt solar plant. That hybrid solar plant is considered to be one of the biggest hybrid solar plants in Africa. And we've now got because we have some of the bigger trucks, the 200 ton trucks, We've got a simulator on-site to make sure that our equipment is used properly and most efficiently. At Masbate, they're doing a big tailings facility expansion arrays, but probably more important for the last couple of years, I've been working at 2 major pits that being Montana and Main vein. We're starting now to get ready for the next couple of years to make the next jump to the next couple of pits and that includes resettlement plan at Blue Quartz and Old Lady.
At Otjikoto, they have a fleet management system. We continue to refine that. And really for them, it's now moving from an open pit operation as we finish up in the Wolfshag pit to eventually bring in this project underground. And I talked briefly about the safety management, but obviously looking at environmental, the social sustainability, Looking at improvements in both management and monitoring. And then really on COVID-nineteen, I'll talk maybe a little bit more About this one again on the ESG side.
But on COVID-nineteen, we've now been doing this, as you know, we kind of identified this in February 2019 sorry, 2020, we're now well over a year into this. And so we're starting to look at all the How do we come out of COVID? What happens next, right? We've kind of grown accustomed to this living apart together scenario, But we really want to get back to what we do best and that is interacting and making sure that our teams are together. And so We're starting to put in place plans to rotate back from this to come back out of the island configuration to back to a more traditional mining configuration.
I'm on Slide 26 now. And I'm not going to spend too much time on this slide because Mike's already hit most of it. Just suffice it to say Even during so now we're in the marathon phase of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. And you can see that still in Q1, we have met or exceeded all three operations, our guidance for the quarter. And so that's really setting us up.
But Mike talked a little bit about this kind of H1, H2 where we were heavily weighted to H2, the second half of the year. But it was really important that we get everything all in place in Q1 and And I can say that despite some of these issues related to COVID and some of the political situations around the world, the sites continue to perform And we're really lined up for a really great second half of the year. Now if you go to Slide 27, What's happening in 2021? We talked a little bit about it. The Fekola Mill, it's really about Cranking that mill up and optimizing it to see what the maximum throughput is.
I'll talk a little bit in the next couple of slides about the different opportunities we have. We basically have several hard rock sources now, which will be the Fekola pit and the Cardinal pit, But we're rolling into the potential also add saprolite. Saffrolite is almost like a free carry on the front half of the Fekola Mill We're only limited by how much we could put through the back half. And talking to John and Randy, we're talking about an additional like 10% to 15 percent throughput when we put the saprolite in. So now we're in the process of really seeing how much can this thing do as a mixture.
We'll talk extensively about the Cardinal Resource and I already told you we're taking the bulk sample. And then the Anaconda project, there's a very extensive slide. We're going to spend a lot of time in that in just a couple of slides. The Otjikoto Mine And then the Gramalote project as we continue to kind of optimize the feasibility through this year. Going to Slide 28, as I promised, here's something on the Cardinal region on the Cardinal area, 500 meters west of the Fekola pit.
What you see here and this is a project that Randy Reichardt and Raymead are working on, What you see here is that they identified an inferred resource of more than 600,000 ounces, Okay. So let that sink in a little bit, 600,000 ounces. This has a very small saprolite component, which we're pulling out as part of the bulk sample and we're getting ready to put into the mill. But then after that, you've got a hard rock source. And the hard rock source, the The grade, as you see in the resource, is 1.54 grams per tonne.
This really is going to allow us Some kind of optionality as we go forward, because as you've seen in 2020, as we move up and down through the You get into areas which are maybe a little bit lower grade and then you get into higher grade. And so this will have the potential, especially with the additional capacity To feed additional ounces into the mill and we've included some of this in our life of mine plans that I'll show here at the end of the slides. There is a potential given the fact that we've got additional capacity in the mill to even ratchet that up a little bit more. But additionally, if we get higher grade material at Menekoto or if we get higher throughput, we could We see that this could extend the life of mine a little bit as we go forward. Okay, I'm on Slide 29 now.
This is one of the key slides of this presentation. We spent a lot of time, I think over the last 3 or 4 years, trying to be coy about this project and trying to really not to give too much information About where this project was located, when we talked to investors and analysts, we didn't talk about the fact that it was within trucking distance of Fekola. We didn't say that it was North of Fekola, for a while, we didn't mention the licenses at all, the names of the licenses, And that was primarily because of the artisanal mining aspect inside of Moly. So we were very coy about it. But Recently, because of the permit dispute with the government, we've decided really to kind of Explain to everybody what's going on, because it's important to see how we see a way forward here.
So if you look at what we call the Anaconda project, it actually consists of 2 licenses. So you've got Bentacco North and you've got Menenkoto Sood. So if you look at this, there's 2 boxes on there. Within those two boxes, there's some circles. Now those circles, you may have often heard that The geologists really love to do this to talk about exploration at the snakes, right?
So you might have heard Anaconda, you may have heard Mamba or Adder. These were all targets that were within those two license areas that they continue to drill on. So we kind of interchangeably have talked maybe about the snakes, maybe about Anaconda, maybe about Mankoto, but what you really need to understand is the Anaconda project 2 licenses with a bunch of pits, which are named after snakes, okay? It's only the Menekoto license, which is in dispute right now With the government. And basically, I mean, Clive did a pretty good job of explaining at the beginning.
So we had legally had the right To ask for a 1 year extension on this on the meningoto license with the intent of putting this thing into production We believe that an administrative error was made within the Ministry of Mines And that license was granted to somebody else. We challenged that and through Basically, the Prime Minister issuing an administrative decree, that result was overturned a couple of weeks ago. That license was pulled back from the company that was given to in Mali. And at the time it was pulled back, we were in the process Basically confirming that that license would be given to us. Obviously, with the political situation here right now, we're waiting to see As the government is formed, what they do, but we still believe that that license legally belongs to us and that it will come to us.
But with that being said, we still have optionality, because if you look at, In particular, the Bentacco North Zone, which is not under dispute, that license is clearly ours. You can see That there's a pit there, the Mamba pit, which basically is Almost exclusively on the Minnetonka pit. And it just works out that within this Anaconda project, That's one of the highest area saprolites that we've uncovered. And so we're currently in the process of developing a mining plan. Once again, that's Randy Reichardt and an ESIA, which would allow us basically to submit that document to the government.
We're calling it a Phase 1 study because it really is a trucking study down through the Fekola Mill. We're going to finish that in Q3 of this year and submit it with the full intent of going through all the permitting and it's important you understand that This is a separate license, so we have to go through all the permitting. That's why we're not saying we're putting it in production in Q4. In the slides not only on what we've discovered in these areas, but also what could potentially come as we finish to drill off Pentaco. But what I will tell you is that in we also believe that while we have the trucking study and we're going to implement that in 2022, We still believe there's a significant sulfide resource or hard rock resource within this area.
And so we're kind of scheduling right now for the second half of 2022 also to come out with the initial resource on the hard rock side of it, which would then give us some optionality. Would you in fact Truck that, we don't know because we don't know the grade yet down to Fekola because it would have to be pretty high grade to replace the Fekola grade Or would you in fact build a separate mill right there in this area. And so we believe that they will be kicking that study off in second half of twenty twenty two. Looking at Slide 30, this is the Wolfshag underground development. So this is we've talked about this a little bit already.
The fact of the matter is this is allowing us to kind of increase to in the neighborhood of 200,000 ounces Per year for the next 4 years as 2022 through 2025. This project despite COVID Remains on schedule. We believe that we will be pulling ore out of there in Q1 in 2022. To date, we've Developed more than 600 meters of access into this. And this Starting in 2022, we're looking at approximately $50,000 a year pulling it and that's an average, that's plusminus out of the underground and the methodology is long hole stoping.
Going to the next slide. So we always talk about this kind of 4 year underground resource, but the reality is, is we have And inferred resource down plunge, the Wolfshag down plunge extension and the geologists have done a very good job of hitting this thing from the surface, But that's not the best use of capital and it's not maybe not the best way to drill off this resource. And so we've worked with them to prepare an exploration drift, which basically at the bottom of the Wolfshag underground development will pull out and at the end of 2021, they'll be able to start hitting target from underground. So certainly it will be much cheaper and more efficient. So we certainly see a potential not only to, as I said to the 4 years, we could see some additional life from the Wolfshag down plunge extension.
And then just real quick, this kind of purple area or this pink area, I know Tom is going to talk a little bit about it. It's very early days. And so I can't really talk about what it means for mining. What I can tell you is that for us, it's If you've got to find something underground, given the fact that we've already done all of the initial development for the underground, I mean, just visually, you can see that this is not too far off of the underground. And without much difficulty, you could see us spinning down into this area if there's any potential for additional resource there in grabbing that area.
So that's one to watch from the mining side. Now I'm on Slide 32, turning my attention to the Gramalote project. This one, Clive already alluded to, this one was maybe For us, not as exciting. The results when we got the results in May, they were a little bit unexpected. But The next slide will really explain why that happened.
This slide basically compares the PEA, which we did at the beginning of 2021, Which has both inferred and indicated in it and it compares to the feasibility study. And what you can see is really, while the economics pass our hurdle for construction, We felt that when we looked at it, that there's a very real potential that we could optimize in. So if you go to Slide 33, a lot of people, of course, when the results came out, they were asking, how did this How did you get worse results? And so it's really important to understand the process. So when we took over management from AGA at the beginning of 2020, They had already finished the PFS, which the PEA was based on.
They had done an ESIA and actually pulled a construction permit. So the ESIA and construction permit allowed them basically to immediately start construction. Well, we didn't want to upset that process. And so what we decided with was that we would not spend a lot of time doing value engineering on it. We would take their design And we would apply it just to Bramble Ote Ridge, just the one area of the license and we would do a feasibility study on that.
So the key things that came out of that was, 1, we had less ounces and this was this is result of only working on Gramalote Ridge and there were some changes in the pit slope based on the way we had set up and the way we would actually operate. But it was also the big thing was that we can only use indicated material. And I think it's important to acknowledge The drilling program was extremely successful, bringing more than 90% or approximately 90% of the resource into the indicated category for the Gramalote Ridge. And if there were some increases in costs, those were related to fuel, electricity and labor, But those are things that we couldn't control. Those were real market surveys, which came back and those were the numbers.
And then the last thing which changed There was some infrastructure changes, infrastructure costs. And of course, any time that you delay things like there's a resettlement There's some working with our Tesla miners. Every year that you delay those and they know that there's a project coming, the costs go up. And so those costs did go up during the study. But what we did is we looked at it and we said, okay, how did this happen and should we kind of now step back and take a good hard look at what has happened.
And what we saw is, we saw a project that If we had really developed it from kind of first principles as engineers and as geologists, we thought that there was some real potential to change us. And So we looked at the model and said, can we get back to kind of what that original PEA those original PEA numbers were? And we basically came up with a concept that we thought we could. And so really that involved 4 areas. 1, we had to come back and drill some more.
And that was not only drilling some of the remaining invert in Gramalote Ridge, this was actually stepping out and there's 2 other areas Trinidad and Monas that we're trying to put a drilling program on. We also saw that there was some real potential for value engineering. And I'll just use one example. Basically, there's a river that goes right through the pit and it's put into a tunnel where it goes through a mountain and then it's spit out the other side of the mountain and then down into a major river, a major waterway. Well, that structure itself originally during the PEA was just almost a concept, very high level engineering.
When we got into it, We realized that this was really quite a significant event. And so that we thought there was the potential instead of putting it into a tunnel that maybe we could just blast a channel. We could basically channelize it and we could actually use that channel as potentially as a power source. Another example is the fact that the camp, the personnel camp is on one side of a major highway With the mine on the other the mine and mill on the other side, and in order to do that, the government was requiring a major overpass, civil project to keep people and vehicles from cross from going on the highway. So we're now looking at potentially adjusting the camp and moving it on the same side of the river or on the same side of the highway.
Now those things don't sound like a lot, But when you're talking about potentially changing your environmental impacts and social impacts in Colombia, that absolutely requires us to look at, You then have to go back and open up your environmental permit. So we're in the process now of doing the optimization and seeing, does it make sense to open up the ESIA or do we just keep it the way it is right now? The other two things that we have left to do there, of course, we have to continue to maintain Our social license to operate and that includes those two things I talk about advancing the resettlement and the artisanal mining solution. And then we also have to keep things that are on the critical path moving forward. Obviously, one of the long lead items there is to bring a power overhead power line in the site.
So we want to keep that moving. There is a hydro station, which is on-site, Which has to be moved. So we're working through that. All of those four things we have approved a budget. We provided that budget to AGA and they're currently in the process of evaluating our work and discussions with them is they've got to Now these last two slides, I'm on Slide 35 now.
These last two slides are really for me interesting. So this slide right here, the Slide 35, this was the previous 5 year gold production. And I think we showed this at the AGM last year. We certainly showed it at Investor Days and we were pretty happy with the slide. It showed us maintaining production really kind of between that 800 1,000 ounces a year range for the next 5 years.
We had Gramalote coming in, in 2024, but we had some interesting questions that everyone kept asking. So what's happening out in 2022? Why is there a dip there? That dip is purely a result of the mine plans, in particular at Fekola. But once again, remember I said we're going up and down through the high grade.
And in 2022, the mine sequencing really didn't allow us to bring any ounces forward when we did the optimization. And we always said at that time, Give us a little bit of time. Certainly, as you do your budgets and you do your mine planning going forward, the resolution gets better and better and you're able to bring So now if you look at Slide 36, you can see that we've done exactly that, right? So this is What is in our 2020 life of mines. So this is sorry, 2021 life of mines, the ones that we're just coming out with right now.
And what you're seeing here is not only have we increased or we've gotten that dip out of 2022, We have a great profile across all 5 years, which basically puts us well above 900,000 ounces for all three of our operations. And if you look Including Calibri in those, we're basically at 1,000,000 ounces. Now this is important. There's some important things which are in the footnotes and in the bullets down the side. So this does include some cardinal.
Remember, that's an inferred resource. It includes Gramalote, but it's moved out to 2025 now. But that right now, remember, we're optimizing. So that's we don't have the feasibility study done on that, but that's our best guess. The It does not include, as I talked about, this whole Meninikotas or this whole Anaconda situation.
So if you look at Anaconda, it doesn't include anything from Menekoto, which we certainly see when they confirm we get the license back To add ounces, it doesn't include Bentacco North, which we know we're already preparing a development plan. Anything from the underground extension, It doesn't include anything on Keyaka. And this graph is run at 8,000,000 tons per annum. So you could see, I've already talked about the potential to go to 8.5% and above. These numbers should absolutely increase as we go forward.
So I guess we're there. I'd like to stop and I'll turn it over to Tom to expand upon what I was talking about as far as the exploration and then other things he's
work. Thank
you. Thank you, Bill. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about our exploration programs that are going on around the world right now. As you can see, we have a fairly active program and we have a pretty good budget for this year. As Clive we're looking at $66,000,000 in exploration of which and this is going to sound funny, but only $38,000,000 of that is for brownfields exploration around the mines.
Additional $27,000,000 is for grassroots exploration. And this is where the guys have been working on these things for many, many years, Including, in the case of Uzbekistan, almost 15 years, developing ideas for large projects around the world. And I'm going to talk a little bit about some of those right now. But before that, I'll give you some of the excitement from Mali. West Male.
Fekola is located on the Senegal Male share zone, one of the more prolific gold regions in the world, which Fekola is we started Fekola with, I believe, it's 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 ounces. And you can see from the exploration we've done, the budgets and the production that Bill has been talking about, we've certainly grown that quite a bit. And I'm going to go through some of these. The first one up, this is a long section for Fekola and you guys have seen this. I've shown the same long section for a number of years, Always talking about it's open down plunge and we really want to get at it.
And we still really want to get at it. It's still open down plunge and some of the holes are hole 415 below the pit, 3 grams over 38 meters 409, 4 grams over 30 meters gives you an idea of Not always it well open, but it's those are really good grades and really good thickness for mining. And as I said, I've been talking about it for a number of years. We keep saying we're going to get at it. Unfortunately, we do things like find cardinal and we find the snakes and we get a little bit distracted.
But we do plan to get at this this year. We do plan to do some drilling down plunge of Fekola. And this is, as I said, wide open. When you look at the size of the structure, the way it goes, there's definitely some size potential still on the structure itself. Next slide, Cardinal.
As Bill has talked about, Cardinal is very close to the Fekola pit. And I have to admit, we did find it by accident drilling off an area that was meant to be for waste dumps, but that's exploration. Next slide. We've talked about a Bill has talked about over 600,000 ounce inferred resource. When you look at this long section, that inferred resource just covers the pits that you see much higher up.
As we've seen with our drilling, there's a series of at least 3 or 4 ore shoots that are plunging northwards and they seem to remain open. And we've done some drilling this year down plunge And well below our resource pits and we've had some intersections like Hole 557, we had 4.almost4.3 grams over 11 meters. Whole 558 where we've had 2.4 grams over 24 meters. It's on the right hand side and the north side of this, which is well below our existing resource And down plunge. So although Cardinal has a significant resource, we see this as also having like Fekola, really good potential for an underground mine after the open pit or during the late stages of the open pit.
Onto the Anaconda region, our exploration has continued on to the north of the Anaconda, blue in this is the Bentancol license area. And you can see from some of these intersections, green being sulfide, oxide being in red. In the printing on the right, you see an Anaconda saprolite on the far north end, we've got hole 39 had 2.7 grams over 38 meters of saprolite. Hole 44 nearby had 2 grams over 40 meters in sulfides. And this again is well beyond the existing resource area and the existing exploration area that the engineers are looking at.
So we believe the Anaconda area has significant potential to grow well beyond where we are today. And our exploration focus so far this year in this project has been predominantly in the Batango area following Mamba North. And this slide shows the boundary between Bentancos and Minakoto. And you can see in the slide on the right hand side, the bulk of the mineralization in Mamba and the bulk of the good mineralization in Mamba is actually on the Betancal license to the north And remains open to the north and actually very open to the north. We continue to follow it northwards with our ongoing drilling programs.
And we're I have to say pretty excited about the size potential of this area. On to Ojikoto, again, as Bill said, you can see the underground development on Wolfshag here. And this is just a plan view of the same thing that he was showing you, showing the OTG 23 zone off to the east. This is the area we've been focused on almost exclusively this year with our drill program is we've got almost 20,000 meters planned. We've drilled 8,000 meters so far.
And you can see some of the intersections in this area, not the 50 or 60 meter thick intersections of Fekola. But whole 574, we got 4 grams over 12.6 meters. Whole 539, we got 4 grams over 21 meters. So we're seeing a zone that's in the sort of 10 to 20 meter thickness with grades upwards of between 3 to 5 grams. So a very significant zone given it's right beside an existing underground development plan.
So we're pretty excited about it. I don't know the size potential yet. It's still very early on. It was something we just found last year. But drill planning is ongoing with that.
And we hope to when we start drilling Wolfshag underground that we're going to be able to combine that with some underground drilling on the OTG 23 zone. But right now, we continue to drill it from surface. Now one of my more favorite subjects, our grassroots expedition program, Especially Ojikoto or not Ojikoto, Uzbekistan. Roger and I first went to Uzbekistan over 15 years ago, during the BIMA days to talk to them about doing exploration on some of the ground around their major discoveries. The Tian Shan gold belt, which is part of what Uzbekistan covers, is one of the most prolific gold belts in the world, bar none.
And you can see in the next slide, just near our licenses, you have things like Murintao, 150,000,000 ounces. 150,000,000 ounces. They produce 2,000,000 ounces a year. And that's within a stone's throw through of the licenses we've just recently acquired, which are covered areas in and around these existing deposits. We've just started drilling this year.
We did some Sampling last year and soil sampling last year, we're now in our 2nd diamond drill hole on one of our targets and we've been doing RC drilling from the beginning of this year. This is one of our more exciting early stage exploration programs. It's an example of being very, very patient in this business. You don't just walk in sometimes and find what you want. Sometimes it takes a long time and this is definitely an example of that and we're very proud of it.
Another one of our grassroots targets is in Finland. We're right beside the Ikari discovery by Rupert Resources and the geology of the Rupert Resources discovery and some of the Soil and near surface glacial till anomalies from that license extend on to our license. We've been waiting to drill this for some time now. We're in the final stages of permitting and we expect when Freeze Up comes, we'll be able to start follow-up drilling in the area immediately down or immediately long strike from this zone. We do have some good anomalies in the area worth following up, and we believe we've got some decent potential in this area.
Another example of our early or fruits of our early stage exploration efforts and being patient with government people and the people you're dealing with is in Egypt, we've recently been awarded the Baramilla license in the Central Egypt. It's an area that's seen production since the time of the Faroes. We're in the final stages of negotiating the final terms license with the government and we hope to be a start exploration on this project later on this year. And with that, I'd like to say thank you very much to everybody here and a special thanks to our crews, our exploration crews, but everybody this year who's last year and a half have certainly sacrificed well beyond everything to keep continuing with our exploration and our mining. I'd like to say a big thanks to them.
With that, I'll pass you on to Bill again. Thank you.
Okay. I'd like to talk a little bit about ESG. And typically, when we do this presentation on ESG, it's more it's really Almost like a celebration of all the fun stuff we've had to do, we've gotten to do at each of the sites. This year we decided to maybe go a little bit heavier and I apologize for that. I know we're at the end of the presentation, but I think that there is some information Really people, the investors and shareholders should know that we're doing, which is really kind of out there on the front of ESG.
And so with that, I'll kick it off. This is just kind of our philosophy that we're required to play a key role in sustainable development wherever we're we see it as kind of the 3rd leg of the tripod with you've got industry and government and then you've got the communities. So we believe we take a unique approach And we're going to talk a little bit about some of that. I'm on Slide 53 now. I guess I want to start out It just I think it was today or yesterday, we announced our 5th publishing of our responsible mining report raising the bar.
We get so much feedback on this positive feedback where people really Feel like it that it really lets them know what we do on ESG. And this year, we've actually linked it into our website. There's an interactive version. So I would encourage everybody to go in and have a look at it. But what that is, it's really a repository of everything ESG.
And I'll tell you, while There are a lot of feel good stores in there. It also has a lot of detail on where we comply. And if there's a situation where we think we could have done better, we're almost we're very cards on the table and we're happy to So we could improve. And so we do in fact report to the Global Reporting Initiative Standards And in the mining and metals sector disclosures, so a lot of good information there. Going to Slide 54, one of the things that we often get asked when we're out talking to people, investors shareholders is, you're working in some of these maybe not as developed countries and do you in fact Get to skip the environmental standards and not worry about it because no one's watching.
And the answer is a resounding no as As far as what we require from a corporation, we align with basically all the best practices in industries and includes the ICMM principles, certainly the IFC performance standards. I think everyone is aware we have Robin Wiseman, who used to be with the IFC and recently came on to our Board. If you look at all of the ISO standards, we comply with those. And we also this year have joined the World Gold Council. So we're in the process of auditing and complying with responsible gold mining principles.
On Slide 55, this is kind of A bit of a victory lap, Hyde, and I think Clive mentioned this a little earlier on. Despite COVID in 2020, If you look at what we've done, 2 very prestigious international awards, the PDAC Sustainability Award And that really related to the resettlement that we did here in Mali. And I'm going to maybe just deviate from the slides here. That is very special to me in the sense that When we came here, that was not something that was mandatory. That was something that we decided as a company was in the best interest of not only us, but of the community.
They actually thought that they would be better off sitting right next to the project. They thought that there would be more economic opportunity. After extensive consultation with them, we agreed that they were going to move about 4 kilometers away. We created a village that moved more than 3,000 people And put solar power into each of the houses and brought running water to more access points within the village. It's something that is really kind of a calling card for B2 in this part of the world.
It's been shown to many of the government officials
that are fired and
it's really kind of blown away by what we've done. We also won the Mining Journal's 2020 Most Sustainable Miner Award. This was a very interesting award because it was more over the body of work that we had done in 2019. And it really revolved around the kind of the 4 pillars that we espouse when we do Our CSR, our ESG activities and that being public health and education, development of livelihood And of course, the environmental component with things like the Rhino Gold Bar Initiative. And then even within each of the regions where we work, we just listed a couple here.
Like in Mali, we won a couple of awards. And in Namibia, we won an award for environmental. And in Colombia, even though it's a development project, you can see we've won awards. So really it's become a bit of our calling card as far as Our CSR and our sustainability work. I'm going to go to Slide 57 now.
Slide 57 is Talking about occupational health and safety, and I talked a little bit about it. We've had an amazing run, but it's not one of those things Health and safety doesn't kind of rest when you think you've got it all figured out. It's something that you have to work at. It's a craft that you have to work at every day. So when you look at our numbers down in that table on the left, you see that our numbers have improved quite dramatically.
But you can't just assume that that's going to keep carrying on. And so what we've done is we've started looking at what are the next steps. And so each and every shift we talk about people are trying to get home safe. So if you go to Slide 58, this is really some of the things that we're talking about in 2021. As I said, we continue all of our sites have amazing lost time frequency rates, you look at Masbate, that's like 3 years almost 3 years, I think it's 2 3 years of not having any lost time accidents, the Fekola plant, the Wolfshag underground, those are development projects where you typically see people get hurt.
We've gone, knock on wood, without an injury at both of those sites. And then if you look at what we're doing on the right hand side, it really revolves around coming back to our grassroots, making sure that all of the safety procedures and the programs are in place and making sure that All of the supervisors are ensuring that all of our workers are in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. Talking about Slide 59, this is the COVID-nineteen slide. And Clive mentioned this, the fact that we spent a significant amount of money really supporting not only the government, but communities where we work and making sure that we didn't just forget about the fact that there was a whole economy around us, which was being turned over upturned because of COVID. And so we looked at not only Do we look at medical supplies, but we also looked at things like sanitation and hygiene.
We made sure that the doctors had PPE. And as Clive said, probably one of the most interesting ones is we reached back into Vancouver, our home region and supported community programs We're not getting the funding because as COVID hit, people kind of withdrew Their extra money that they were able to spend on things like things on food programs and mental health. And so Across all of our operations and our home organization, we spent a significant amount of money. And so as I said earlier, really what are we looking at now? Now it's a return to work.
Now it's trying to make life back to normal. We've been assisting both On the mine sites and in the communities where we work and making sure people are vaccinated. We're making sure that as we come back out that all of our procedures are Still protect all of our workers in the community and we're just trying to get back to whatever is the new normal. I'm going to go to Slide 61 now On our communities, and I don't I put this slide together and this is not something I normally do. If you see, I kind of normally you don't talk about how much do you spend, right?
Because it's not necessarily about really bragging about how much you spend, it's what kind of impacts you make. But it's really when you think about What happened during COVID, right? So as I said, during COVID, many organizations were pulling back and All of the communities really needed help. And so we really put forth an effort spending, which a lot of money for us, dollars 14,400,000 across our platform to make sure that the communities had the opportunity to developed in those four areas I talked about earlier. So if you look at Slide 62, I'm just going to go through some of the the These are more of the this is the fun stuff I always talk about.
If you look at Slide 62 in Mali, We're doing some very cool things here. We have this community development plan here now, which Maybe for the first time in this part of Western Africa, the community has been involved in deciding what they want us to spend our money on. And so we sat down with them and for us, some of them we didn't consider to be major projects, but for them they were life changing projects Yes, things like even just putting the well into a village where we didn't know they needed it. And so they developed the basic community development plan And then we laid over on top of that some really kind of regional changing projects. And the first one, that 3 year UNICEF partnership project Really one that's absolutely amazing.
That's a partnership with UNICEF where we're going into these artisanal mining sites Where basically you have women and children working alongside of men in very dangerous and hard conditions And we're looking at can we get support for those that are most vulnerable? Can we get it so the children can get an education? Can we make sure that the women have the ability to take care of their kids in these very rough conditions? And so it's an amazing project UNICEF. We've also looked at kind of food security in this part of the world.
And so we're in the process of developing this agricultural business community development project and it's this really kind of a vertically integrated agricultural process where we're talking about potentially providing enough opportunities that you could really if people didn't want to do artisanal mining or some of these other kind of more dangerous activities that could get involved in this and really change their lives. And then the last one on this slide is just this Afek project, which is a joint venture With the Canadian government, where we have basically looked at training people, not at the kind of PhD or bachelor's level, which kind of always the sexy projects. This is the This is the electricians. These are the bricklayers. These are the people that are really needed to build an infrastructure in an economy.
And so We set up this training center in the regional center, not too far away from here, 50 kilometers, and we've brought in more than 100 or more than 1,000 local Already that have been trained through there. Just going to Masbate, I probably got to pick up the pace, so we'll be here all night. Looking at Masbate, I'm not going to go through all these projects. But I will tell you Masbate, they have an amazing ability to create small projects with the community. So there you're required to create the social development management plan with the community.
That is basically part of budget every year and the communities in which we work, they have to approve the projects what you're doing. So Just in 1 year in 2020, more than 200 projects were developed and funded. And these include small projects, but there's also big things like community water system. And if you followed us at all and followed any of our Masbate CSR work, We always talk about this coastal management plan where we're putting down these coral reef balls, bringing coral area, coral reef right next to the mine site back to life. We've also along the shoreline planted more than 1 mangrove trees.
So as this thing changes, we're really changing nature, which was destroyed by illegal fishing and illegal mining back to what it used to be. And of course, we continue on in education and health safety programs as well. Looking at Namibia, Namibia, the first one I think we talked a lot about last year and If you came early, you saw the video, really an amazing success story of this Namibian Rhino Gold Bar. Basically, we donated 1,000 ounces of gold in exchange, we sold those with a small premium, a 15% premium. That money is being used to not only support rhino conservation, it's really being used to support the communities where rhino conservation is occurring.
So it's more of a livelihood project where we're actually helping the communities do something that they love, do something they've historically always done And at the same time, protecting the rhinos. We're working with UNICEF again in Namibia. This is on an education program for young people. 1 of the little shop of physics, that's a project that I actually started way back when I was in Namibia. That's basically bringing physics concepts into the community using basic things that teach the principles of physics.
And then of course, additional we do all schools there, we do internship programs there, we do scholarship programs. So really a large A large gamut of projects. And then if you talk about our 3 operational projects, you can't think that we basically We wait until we start operations and do CSR projects. Even in Gramalote, we've gotten a lot of buy in from the community As we work towards doing things like formalizing artisanal mining, artisanal mining is considered an illegal activity In Colombia, but it's something that a lot of people do. The government has decided to make that a much more formalized process where you can actually become legal doing it and make a profit.
And so we're in the process of helping them do that. We're working on resettlement issues. As I said, really the community now has been waiting on this for quite a long time and they really want to get on with it. And we're also working on these small to medium enterprises and how do we make sure that livelihoods, if you don't want to work within the mining community, how do you earn a living. Now I'm just going to go very quickly through the environmental responsibility.
So I'm going to start on Slide 67. And this is as I said, some of the stuff is maybe a little drier than it normally is, because we're being asked things like, What are you doing on the environmental side or what are you doing related to climate risk? Okay. So on climate risk, we've developed a climate risk management strategy and what we're in the process now, we're assessing our carbon footprint. And it's funny because now kind of All of the rest of the world is caught up to what we're doing.
It was 5 or 6 years ago, we were kind of at the front of the tip of the spear When we put in a hybrid solar plant in Namibia and now kind of everybody is doing it. So We did a 7.5 megawatt in Namibia, other than the data. So we said, okay, let's see if you can match us now. Now we did 30 megawatts So we're on the front edge. Our plan really is to finish up calculating our carbon footprint this year and put together a full carbon reduction plan starting in 2022.
Now if I go to Slide 68, cross just so everyone's aware, we didn't have any significant fines are sanctioned at any of our sites in 2021. We did have one incident where we had an water dam over top in Otjikoto. But across all of our sites, despite COVID, despite being in island configuration where we had trouble getting people in and out, we continue to improve on things like rehabilitation, On waste rock dump design, even things like because we're in Africa, fugitive dust. And so all of these things, Continuous improvement has continued to occur. I'm going to go to Talend's management.
I'm going to be on Slide 70. So in the last couple of years, tailwinds management has really come to the forefront of mining and people want to know, are you complying with international best practices? And I can say without hesitation that absolutely, We are at the front edge of tailings management. We have added specific to B2Gold, our own tailings management procedures. This procedure aligns with the Mining Association of Canada and the Canadian Dam Association.
And While we don't explicitly, so everyone talks about this global industry standard on tailings management, We believe that we're materially in compliance with that and that basically the only reason we haven't adopted that standard is because They're continuing to develop it and we want to make sure that they're going in a direction that we feel comfortable with. So we felt more comfortable aligning with the Mining Association of Canada Standard. I'm going to go to Slide 71 now, looking at tailings some more. Obviously, we spend a lot of time and a lot of money monitoring our facilities and making sure that they're in the best shape that they can be. We have annual inspections by qualified engineers of record.
We have 3rd party independent audits, which come on at a minimum of every 5 years. And obviously, if the risk is higher, we'll do it more often. We have all of the requisite management oversight people within the organization to include tailings engineer, a corporate tailings engineer. We have an accountable executive officer, which is me. I am answerable directly to the CEO and the Board on tailings issues.
And we obviously have to report At least annually and normally we do it twice a year to our subcommittee on health, safety and environment related to tailwinds issues. And with that, I'm going to turn it back over because I'm done with my slides.
Thanks, everyone. We're just going to take a couple of minutes or seconds I can see to set up for Q and A so people can call in any questions. While we wait for that, I just want to cover a couple of points. Couple of things that with all that interesting material Bill was talking about. There are some great videos as many of you are aware, some of them shown today on our website.
Really, we're looking at high quality videos that tell wonderful stories about the things that we do. In in our communities, Bill mentioned the responsible mining report. It's a tremendous document. A lot of work goes into it with a lot of people, and I think it just really underlines the commitment that we all have to be responsible and great document and we're very proud of it and once again very proud of this year's, I just want to clarify something I said before because I realized I talked about the votes for the directors, but I didn't clarify as to why there are some differences. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but if you can indulge me for a little bit, I think it's important.
Some of our directors or some of of our directors have been with the company for over 10 years. In fact, a number of them, including myself, were actually founding directors, in my case, CEO. But Bob Gate and Bob Cross and Jerry Korpin have been with us since they were founding directors of the company. So some shareholders, seem to want to some institutional shareholders and maybe some others really just want to put us all in a box. And there's a box and there's rules for the box.
I always said and it was my father always said to me, all people at Generaliz are wrong. So judge us for what we do and who we are. Hold us accountable. But look at our company in isolation. Don't try and fit us into a box.
One of the boxes is that some of the institutions believe that if you should refresh your board after 10 so part of the thinking is that after 10 years or more, Jerry and Bob and Bob are just so thankful and grateful to me that they're just beholden to anything I want them to do. They've lost their independence as directors. It's pretty thermal steamers. At the end of the day, these are really highly experienced directors who have been through the growth of this company from 0 gold production to 1,000,000 ounces a year supporting management and being there for advice and support and they are highly experienced. Why would you want to lose highly experienced directors who still want to be directors and take all bring all this experience.
Why would you want to have them leave the Board and put in somebody less experience because some shareholders think, oh, well, those people are going to be independent and hold Clive and the team to task. Well, we're more than happy to be accountable anywhere, anytime to our shareholders to institutional shareholders, to our employees. So I just think I find that as a very silly thing. And that's why these gentlemen got 75% of the vote versus some of us who got a lot higher percentage of the vote. I'm surprised I didn't get 75% because I'm a Director too and I've been here forever.
I just wanted to point that out. And I just think for some of these institutions who have 20 somethings in the back room, crunching numbers and coming up with policy. I mean, come on, I think we've got to be a little more accountable. We need to be a bit accountable as well, some of the institutions. So that's something that is they also want to limit the number of boards that people the directors can be on, which I do agree with.
Back in the crazy days here in town, you had guys on 12 boards. Well, that's just silly. A lot of greed involved there. But at the end of the day, they want to limit us severely to 2 boards that you can be on. So therefore, we have to they want us, some of them to lose experienced directors who are still very relevant for what?
We can't get other experienced directors because they're probably on 2 boards, so less experienced people. It doesn't make any sense to me. At the end of the day, we have a great Board of Directors. And as I said, a number of them have been founding directors of this really successful company. I thought I just want to make a point that I wanted to make about COVID earlier.
I got to start writing some stuff down perhaps. But the point is that there's a great opportunity, I think, post COVID for the gold mining industry and other businesses. Because when you think about it, we really stepped up and a lot of other companies did as and may and continue to mine safely in these countries where it was just critical to do that for the betterment for the continued benefit to the economies, people, all these issues we did. But I think there's a great opportunity now because we can go anywhere in the world to the countries we're already in or to Uzbekistan or other countries. And we can say, hey, is what we do, this is how we've done it all around the world.
But also look at what we did during COVID. We were a key industry and we kept people safe, we helped with COVID and we kept these jobs and we kept paying taxes. We kept continuing to pay. I think it's a great opportunity to show people around the world that mining industry has changed. There's a lot of responsible companies out there today.
We need to get some people over the hump about mining is a dangerous practice. So many good things happening in mining. You've seen a lot of them here and many other companies are doing it. So I look forward to going around the world when we can and talking to governments where we work but where we don't. And saying, the Philippines is actually already changing some of their laws to attract more foreign investment, having seen how good mining has been after a bad history in that country, how mining has been and we're a big part of that.
So I think it's a wonderful opportunity to go around the world and say we want to work with governments as a joint venture with the government of Uzbekistan, for example, but show them what we've done and show them particularly what we've done during COVID. Because these are great stories. And maybe we can finally get people to realize that the mining industry has a lot of positive happening, a lot of great job developments, a lot of great reclamation work as we've seen, a lot of great social programs, environmental protection project. It was Bill Laddell that said years ago with our group that this is not your grandfather's mining company. It's much better than that.
Your grandfather's mining company wasn't great company that cared a lot about shareholders or local people or maybe more about shareholders, but local people or the environment, frankly speaking. So let's change a lot. We need to get the world to realize this is a good industry. And if we're if there's a green mining company, I think we're at, frankly, and I think there's others. As I said earlier, some are doing it because they have to.
We've done it for a long time and some others because it's the right thing to do. Finally, before I open for questions, I'll just I want to thank everybody. I mean, obviously, with what we've been able to accomplish in 2020 and during COVID, I'm just well, it amazes me to see what we've accomplished and what we do around the world and how people have faced the challenges of COVID. And the regular challenges we face every day, trying to mine goal 24 hours a day around the world. So thank you to our CREATE Board of Directors.
Support of Directors are remarkable exploration sorry, remarkable executive team and all the various groups that make this happen, exploration, development, legal, accounting, operations people, the environmental people, etcetera, etcetera. Proud to be again this year the President of this remarkable company and all of the governments and the countries we work with great relationships we have and the mutual trust respect and all of the other stakeholders that help us do what we do. So thank you for that. And I will now see if there's any questions that we can answer. And if you don't want to ask a question now, you can submit a question by e mail, and we can the appropriate person will answer it.
Clive, I do have a question from Ovais Habib at Scotia, an analyst who covers us. He was asking how we've operated so well in all these various jurisdictions. He's asking how has B2 Maintain guidance through COVID as well as the coup that took place in Mali. And what's different about B2's culture the The team does so well in managing political risk and security risk in these various countries.
Well, that's an Obase question. There's sort of 3 or 4 parts to it. But Ovais is a very good mining analyst who's covered this for quite a long time. Bit on many chip store sites. There's a whole bunch of stuff in package there.
I do think we probably touched on quite a few of those things there. Guidance, etcetera, well, that's discipline. That's about discipline, and that's what we talked about a lot and we every day, continuing to perform. That's the combination of exploration success, accretive acquisitions in terms of growing the company over time. And the culture, well, I think we talked a lot about that.
And that's one of the things we're most proud of is not just how what we do in the world and what we do in terms of being a profitable company, but the way that we do it. So I think, obviously, I can ask more of that probably in detail, feel free to give me a call. I think we touched on a lot of the things in your question during the presentation.
And there is a part 2. So this also comes from Ovais. But it's related to capital allocation. He's asking well, he's Pointing out that we have one of the highest dividend yields in the business. The meat of his question is, what are the capital allocation plans for the future, Especially if Gramalote is given the green light in 2022.
Do you want to start by that mic or do you want to go ahead? Correct me if I'm wrong, actually don't add to it and make it look like you're not correct me. Yes, I think I may we touched on this as well, but it's a good question. Obviously, the vast majority, I think, of our shareholders who seem to like what we're doing given the votes today, the vast majority of our shareholders want us to continue to grow the company. Kind of what we've done and what we've been for 13 years.
So I think there's a lot of them want to continue that while we pay a dividend at the same time. So that's the balance we're looking for strategically going forward, the ability to do that. So we've got a very healthy dividend as the base points out now. We're not looking in the near term and increasing that. We've got to see what's happening with Gramalote, Potanko, Cardinal, all the various things we're working on and some of the other opportunities to see our cash requirements over time.
So there's going to be a continued balance. But I think majority of our shareholders want us to continue to grow. That's why a lot of the moment for the dividend and for the growth. And there are a group of shareholders, fortunately, they're in the minority who they seem to want us to grow the company without spending any money. So I haven't figured that one out yet build gold mines, you kind of need to spend some money.
So I'm being a bit facetious, but we've had those conversations. So if anybody out there can tell me how to build continue to grow this company with spending no money, I'm all ears. We're always willing to listen to ideas.
That's all the questions we have for now.
Okay. Well, hopefully, it's been an interesting session. Thank you all again and really hope we can do this together next year. So thank you. Stay safe.