Afghanistan’s President Karzai has told reporters that his country is sitting on mineral and petroleum reserves worth an estimated one trillion dollars.
The President told reporters on Sunday that he is basing his assertion on a $17 million survey which the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has been working on for a number of years and which is due to be completed in a couple of months. If correct the war-ravaged nation could become one of the richest in the world if helped to tap its geological deposits.
Afghanistan is not known as a resource-rich country however it does have deposits of copper, iron ore, gold and chromite, as well as natural gas, oil and precious and semi-precious stones. Little of these have been exploited as the country has been mired in an ongoing conflict for 30 years.
China and India have bid for contracts to develop mines, with China's state-owned metals giant Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) winning a three-billion-dollar contract to develop the Aynak copper mine -- one of the world's biggest copper mines-- over the next 30 years. An iron ore contract is expected to be awarded later this year.
Aynak 30 kilometres (20 miles) to the south of Kabul was discovered in 1974 and is estimated to contain 11.3 million tonnes of copper.
The Hajigak iron ore mine in Bamiyan province, north of Kabul, is currently under tender, with one Chinese and six Indian firms bidding. The contract is for the exploitation of almost two billion tonnes of high-grade ore, involving processing, smelting, steel production and electricity production.
1 comment:
Although I sincerely hope he's right, this sounds highly optimistic.
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