Monday, November 10, 2008

Ecuador mining law to be presented

The piece of legislation thousands of investors, Ecuadorians and mining industry personnel have been waiting for to be released is about to come out. Since Kinross picked up 17 million ounces (or more) for 1.2 billion dollars, outrage ensued and Patrick Anderson is now on the board of directors of Noront (what were they thinking?). Now since the mining investment sector collapsed I've heard a few people say this wasn't a bad deal...thinking short term I can agree but long term, which is what people who had invested in ARU were thinking...this was far, far from a good deal. The only solace the ARU shareholders have is that at least they didn't get robbed like Crystallex and Gold Reserve.

Everyone expects the mining mandate to be pro-mining, even though the president has some extreme factions inside his government he was quoted as saying:

"If there are deep changes to the law, I will veto it and put it up for a popular referendum," Correa said during his weekly media address on Saturday. "The government's political decision is to develop the mining sector."

At least there's some positive news coming out of the mining sector. We'll see what the details of the bill say when it's released but after reading a few drafts, I think it's safe to say this won't have anything major in it that will make people's head spin.

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