Two weeks ago the precious metals space was closely following the fate of Sumitomo's San Cristobal mine, where a long strike had paralyzed work at the world's third largest producer of silver and sixth-largest producer of zinc. While the strike was eventually resolved with concession to the domestic workers, a far more troubling report from Bolivian daily La-Razon states that Bolivia's president Evo Morales is now planning on expropriating zinc, silver and tin mines sold off by previous governments. Bloomberg reports that "Morales will announce a decree May 1 to “dismantle the privatization model,” said Nicolas Fernandez, a spokesman for state mining company Corp. Minera de Bolivia, known as Comibol. "The government is recovering all the privatized companies,” Fernandez said today in a telephone interview from La Paz. “When the decision is taken, Comibol will be ready to manage these mines.”" Among the contracts to be affected are those with Glencore International AG, Pan American Silver Corp., and most importantly, Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp., which is operator of the San Bartolome mine: the world's largest pure silver mine. Notably San Bartolome and Sumitomo's San Cristobal "account for about 83% of the nearly 1.1M tons of fine silver Bolivia produced in 2009, according to Mining Ministry data" according to The Gold Report. If indeed this news is proven true, and we will know for sure in 16 days, looks for the price of silver to spike considering about 1.33 million kilograms of silver was produced in Bolivia 2009, according to the U.S. Geological Survey: an amount which will likely fall off a cliff following the utter chaos that is unexpected nationalization.
Read the full story here, on ZeroHedge:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/will-silver-surge-following-nationalization-bolivias-silver-mines-president-evo-morales
