Peru REINFO deadline: 68 days left for informal gold miners

Peru's REINFO registry, the permit that lets tens of thousands of informal gold miners keep working while they formalise, expires on 31 December 2026. That leaves 68 days. With a gram of gold worth about $128.50 at Friday's close, the deadline puts some of the most valuable small-scale mining in the Americas on a clock.

What is REINFO, and what changed?

REINFO is Peru's Registro Integral de Formalización Minera, a register created for small and artisanal miners who are on the path to a legal licence. Being on it shields them from prosecution for informal mining while the paperwork is done. Critics have long argued that it also gives cover to illegal operations that never intend to formalise.

In December 2025 the government promulgated Law 32537, which extended the registry to 31 December 2026, or until a new law for small-scale and artisanal mining, known as the MAPE law, and its regulations take effect, whichever comes first, Forbes Peru reported. The extension came with conditions.

According to a summary by the law firm Cuatrecasas, registered miners had until 25 April 2026 to report the true location of their operations, and the executive had until 24 February to send Congress a bill for a special tax regime for small miners. The statistics office INEI, the energy and mines ministry and the geological institute Ingemmet were also told to run a national census of small-scale and artisanal mining, Expreso reported.

Why the price makes this harder

The economics of informal mining have rarely been stronger. Gold closed Friday near $3,997 an ounce, or about $128.50 a gram. Even after a 6.7% fall over the past month, that is about 2.2 times the price of five years ago, on our price data. A single kilo is worth close to $128,500.

That gap is what keeps miners in the informal economy and what makes any deadline politically hard to hold. When the registry was extended last year, specialists quoted by Canal N warned that another delay could favour illegal mining, and pointed to the MAPE law as the key to replacing REINFO for good.

Neighbouring countries show what is at stake. In Colombia, a United Nations survey this month found that three quarters of river gold mining is illegal. In Peru, informal mining is concentrated in regions such as Madre de Dios, Puno and La Libertad.

What happens next

There are two ways the deadline can be met. Either the MAPE law and its rules come into force before 31 December, replacing the registry, or the registry simply lapses and miners who have not finished formalising lose their protection. A third path, another extension, would need Congress to act again in the next nine weeks.

For readers outside Peru, the link to the global price is indirect: Peru is one of Latin America's largest gold producers, and any crackdown that cut informal output would tighten supply at the margin. Our gold price history shows how high the price has climbed in the years the registry has kept being extended.

What to watch

• 31 Dec: REINFO expires unless the MAPE law takes effect first or Congress extends it again.
• 1 Jan: miners who are neither formalised nor covered by a new regime lose the registry's protection from prosecution.