Randgold Resources inaugurated its Tongon gold mine in northern Ivory Coast on Monday, which started pouring gold last year and expects to reach its 270,000 ounces a year target by the end of this year.

President Alassane Ouattara unveiled a plaque for the new mine, a signal that his government would focus on the mining sector much more than previous ones have in the past.

"The inauguration of the Tongon gold mine is the first step towards realising our mission to make the mining sector a major pole of development ... of our country," Ouattara said at Randgold's camp in north Ivory Coast's remote bush, set against the towering machinery of the mine and an artificial lake.

"We have significant mineral resources: iron, manganese, gold ... and mining them represents tens of thousands of jobs," he said.

The West African state has large reserves of gold, nickel, iron ore, manganese and some diamonds, but much of it is unexplored and many known deposits are undeveloped.

Ivory Coast has in the past been slow to search for likely caches of mineral resources, focusing on the agricultural "miracle" that made it the world's top cocoa producer.

Post-independence president Felix Houphouet-Boigny encouraged his people to grow cocoa, cotton and coffee that brought wealth to hundreds of thousands of peasant farmers, but he showed scant interest in mining.

A decade of crisis has scared off investors, but several companies, including India's Tata Steel, are eyeing it.

"It is time Ivory Coast took advantage of mineral projects to become ... a leader ... in West Africa," mines minister Adama Toungara said at the ceremony.

Randgold CEO Mark Bristow told Reuters on Sunday the company expected to be producing 1.2 million ounces of gold a year from its various African discoveries by 2015.

He added that the company had 10 permits to explore parts of northern Ivory Coast with a similar geological profile to Tongon, in search of new mines.

After meeting Randgold officials, Ouattara was driven past the structures of columns, pulleys, ropes, and boxes of the mine, and taken into a room to watch two workers pouring bars of gold from a furnace.

The Tongon operation is located 55 km (30 miles) south of the border with Mali. Randgold holds an 89 percent share, with the state share at 10 percent. Mining started in April 2010 and it has a 10-year lifespan, employing 1,500 people.

A local official from the area, N'golo Coulibaly, welcomed the mine in a speech, but warned that he hoped it would not pollute the land so that it could be restored for farming when it expires.

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