Georgetown: Prime Minister Samuel Hinds and other key stakeholders yesterday signed another Mineral Agreement this time with First Bauxite Corporation of Canada for the construction and operation of a large scale state of the art mine in Guyana.
Hilbert Shields the Chief Executive Officer who signed on behalf of the Canadian company during the simple ceremony held at the Office of the President said that all of the feasibility studies and necessary environmental requirements have been met thus paving the way for the financing to be secured to commence the construction of the mine.
He reaffirmed that the company is looking to acquire the funding to start construction of the project early next year saying that it will take about 18 months to build the mine which should be commissioned by the end of 2013 with full production by 2014.
“$20M and four years later with new technology for drilling, with technical support from the bauxite community in Guyana and with the introduction of expertise from foreign consultants with worldwide experience we have evolved a world class exploration team,” said Shields.
He assured that his company is comfortable with the challenges of exploring for bauxite in Guyana and added that they have revised the resource data from 1.6M tones to in excess of 12M tonnes per year.
With the revised resource data Shields said that mine will support a project life of 44 years at extracting 100,000m per year.
Hinds told the stakeholders that witnessed the signing that he is pleased to have formally signed the agreement with First Bauxite Corporation which would mean a renewed development drive for the Mining Town of Linden among other surrounding communities.
Chairman of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission Major General (rtd) Joe Singh said that the signing of the agreement marks another significant step in the exploration of Guyana’s mineral resources pointing to the recent injections of capital in the industry.
“All Guyanese should be proud of the fact that we have gotten to this stage in terms of sensible exploitation of our resources.”
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