Bolivia to nationalize mines following deadly clash by miners
Mon Oct 16, 8:18 AM
ca.news.finance.yahoo.com
By Dan Keane
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) - President Evo Morales said Sunday he will nationalize Bolivia's mines as part of an overhaul of the South American country's mining industry after a violent clash earlier this month between rival miners' groups killed 16 people.
Morales nationalized the South American country's oil and gas reserves on May 1, giving international companies six months to cede majority control of their Bolivian operations to the state or leave the country.
However, the process has been delayed by the resignation of key energy officials and a reorganization of Bolivia's own state petroleum company.
"We started with hydrocarbons, and the next step are the minerals," Morales said while giving away tractors to local farmers in the town of Challapata, 190 kilometres south of the capital La Paz.
"There will be some surprises with tin, silver and gold. These minerals must pass to the Bolivian state under the social control of the Bolivian people. That is the next urgent step we must take."
Newly appointed Mining Minister Guillermo Dalence said Sunday that the nationalization plan would be launched on Oct. 31, the anniversary of the first nationalization of mines during a revolution in 1952.
Morales's comments were a stronger reiteration of a nationalization plan he put forth immediately following the deadly battle Oct. 5-6 between independent and state-employed miners over the right to work at the Huanuni tin mine. At the time, Morales had said the state would only expropriate mines where foreign operators had not invested sufficiently.
In the first half of 2006, Bolivian mines exported minerals worth US$483 million, according to the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Commerce. The metals - mostly zinc, silver, gold, and tin - together represented Bolivia's largest export after natural gas.
Morales' administration is continuing negotiations with independent miners' cooperatives who stormed the Huanuni mine on Oct. 5. State-employed miners counterattacked, and the rival groups exchanged gunfire and threw dynamite at each other for two days before 700 riot police restored order.
Both groups see Huanuni's tin as a source of steady employment in South America's poorest country.
Morales was elected in December as Bolivia's first indigenous president. Besides nationalizing the petroleum industry, he has also called an assembly to rewrite the constitution and proposed a dramatic land reform bill that would redistribute unproductive land to Bolivia's poor. |
