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MONTREAL — Gold production will continue to fall, despite a brief boost in 2009 and soaring prices, as deposits are exhausted and new discoveries remain elusive, say miners.

In terms of production, "2009 is the outlier as far as the trend," Omar Jabara, spokesman for US-based Newmont Mining, the second-largest gold producer in the world, told AFP.

Overall, "it's a fact that gold production from mines has been in decline since 2001 and has gone roughly from 85 million ounces to about 75 million ounces a year," said Vincent Borg, spokesman for number one producer Barrick Gold.

"It sort of goes down about one million ounces every year and our forecast is that it will continue to decline despite the higher price" for gold nowadays, he said.

Almost everywhere, mineral deposits are being exhausted and new deposits are not being found fast enough to replace them, these experts explain.

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