Burkina Faso to United Arab Emirates

Checked 2026-09-29

Public law and official guidance, published as research. Not legal, tax or financial advice.

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Burkina Faso United Arab Emirates

No bilateral gold instrument found. The pair gets ordinary treatment (0% UAE duty). Burkina Faso filed almost no HS 710812 exports to the UAE with UN Comtrade for 2023 (5 kg), but its customs data show 22.39 t exported to the UAE in 2024 (ITIE), while the UAE reports 7.75 t direct from Burkina Faso and 42 t from Togo, the main transit route for smuggled Burkinabè artisanal gold. A December 2025 analysis says nearly 32% of Burkina Faso's gold was allegedly sold to the UAE in 2024.

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Secondary 2

Read in full 2
Not recorded 1

Text 2
Not stated 1

Where practice departs from the law

What credible sources show happening that the law does not provide for.

In 2023 Burkina Faso reported 5 kg (US$0.2m) of HS 710812 exports to the UAE, while the UAE reported 7,751 kg (US$471m) from Burkina Faso. For 2024 Burkinabè customs data do show large exports to the UAE (22.39 t, bfae.flow-bf-exports-2024), so the 2023 gap reflects reporting to UN Comtrade rather than the absence of a declared trade.
Figures: Gap ~7.7 t (2023)
Secondary
ATI/SWISSAID describe smuggled artisanal gold leaving via Togo (and Mali, Niger, Ghana, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire) for the UAE. The UAE recorded imports from Togo, which has no significant gold production, of 20,621 kg in 2022 and 42,310 kg (US$2.65bn) in 2023. The Burkinabè Ministry of Mines' anti-fraud brigade (BNAF 2023 report) describes artisanal gold assayed in illegal urban buying offices and carried clandestinely to Lomé (Togo) and Bamako (Mali), bound for Europe and Arab countries. The ITIE 2024 report says the UAE takes 100% of Togo's artisanal gold exports and about 96% of Benin's and Niger's.
Figures: UAE imports from Togo: 20.6 t (2022), 42.3 t (2023)
SecondaryNot recorded

What we could not obtain

Documents the research needed and could not get, where they might be, and why.

No gaps recorded

Routes using this pair

Routes the research composes from Burkina Faso to United Arab Emirates

Sources

ATI / SWISSAID (M. Pellerin, M. Ummel) - Flux d'or illicites et évasion fiscale dans huit pays partenaires de l'ATI (Sept 2025)Open the source
Not recordedNot statedAddis Tax Initiative / SWISSAID
Rapport 2023 sur l'état de la fraude en matière de commercialisation de l'or et des autres substances précieuses (Juillet 2024)Open the source
Read in fullTextMinistère de l'Energie, des Mines et des Carrières - Brigade Nationale Anti-Fraude de l'or (BNAF). · Read 2026-09-28
Read in full 2026-09-29 (laws-bf pass; log laws/_work/bf-log.md). Header completed 2026-09-29.
Initiative pour la Transparence dans les Industries Extractives du Burkina Faso - Rapport ITIE 2024 (rapport intégral)Open the source
Read in fullTextITIE Burkina Faso (Comité de pilotage); report prepared by Enerteam; copy published on the DGD site (douanes.bf). · Read 2026-09-29
Read in part 2026-09-29: chapter 2.1 (legal framework, pp. 40-56), 3.3 (exports, pp. 97-100), SONASP sections (pp. 89, 113, 120-123). Payment tables and annexes not read. Header completed 2026-09-29. Missing from this copy: Annexes 27-28 (shipment-level export detail) are listed in the table of contents but their tables were not found in this file; not checked further.