According to the ministry, the licenses were cancelled due to violations of licensing requirements. The names of the companies and the deposits they were developing were not disclosed.

The ministry also recalled that, under Kyrgyz legislation, licenses for subsoil use — including licenses for geological exploration and the development of mineral deposits — are granted exclusively to state enterprises and business entities in which the state holds a controlling stake.

In June, it was reported that the Ministry of Natural Resources, Ecology and Technical Supervision had conducted a large-scale inventory of all previously issued subsoil use licenses. The review identified 836 cases of violations, with the validity of around 600 licenses temporarily suspended, while some were cancelled.

A total of about 2,000 subsoil use licenses have been issued in Kyrgyzstan.