Investor-friendly mining regulations coming to Ecuador says president

Michael Allan McCrae | May 17, 2013 | 2:49 pm Base Metals Precious Metals Latin America Copper Gold Silver

Goldman Sachs in huge bullion buy from cash-strapped Ecuador

President Rafael Correa on the campaign trail

A hurried up mining bill is being presented to Ecuador’s congress that is being championed by President Rafael Correa to jump start investment in the Latin American country.

The country, which has untapped gold, silver and copper deposits, hopes to reduce its reliance on oil exports.

Highlights are a provision that will delay a windfall tax until a company’s investments are recovered. The other will set a ceiling on royalties. Given the president’s recent electoral win, the reforms are expected to pass.

The rules are meant to hurry up the start of the Kinross Gold’s $1.3 billion Fruta del Norte gold project.

“We’ve sent a bill labelled as urgent … it contains the reforms to the mining law. Our mining law is very good, but we made some mistakes and it was too strong in some aspects and there were not as many investments as we expected,” said Correa, according to a report by Reuters.

Creative Commons image by GobernacionImbabura