Since February 2011, the Colombian government has suspended the granting of mining concessions in order to carry out a complete overhaul of the sector.
During this time, Colombia’s national mining agency (ANM) has been working steadily clearing out over 19,000 backlogged applications for mining concessions. Simultaneously, the agency has also been carrying out a thorough supervision of the 9,500 existing mining titles in the country of which 4000 had been visited at the end of May.
With this being said, on July 2nd the new web based platform was launched which can be used to request exploration or mining concessions, temporary authorisations and the legalization of operations. In only a matter of days there has already been 2300 applications with a large number of these being for concession contracts.
Already established in the country are a number of Canadian junior miners with a few Australian juniors present as well. The Harris Gomez Group recognizes the potential of Colombia and over the last year we have taken steps to open an office in anticipation of more companies entering the market.
As many of us already know the capital markets have been unforgiving and with gold prices hovering around the US $1200/oz, it is easy to be pessimistic about any type of short-term growth. With this being said, Colombia is a growing country with favourable investment policies and many positive developments that include the recent peace negotiations with FARC. The negotiations could lead to the future exploration of areas that have been largely unexplored by both the hydrocarbon and mining industries. We will continue to monitor developments for our clients. If anyone has any questions we encourage you to contact our Colombia office.
