Bloomberg News – Malawi’s government placed a temporary ban the exports of all minerals to allow the country’s Ministry of Mining to streamline procedures.

The ministry wants to enhance “regulatory frameworks that benefit both the industry and the country’s economic growth,” it said in a notice in the Daily Times newspaper.

Malawi is one of the world’s poorest nations and relies mainly on agriculture, with tobacco its biggest source of foreign exchange. Rio Tinto Group-backed Sovereign Metals Ltd. is developing the Kasiya asset in the west of the country which – if built – will produce graphite as a co-product of rutile.