OTHER JURISDICTIONS Q&A
Colombia: tapping potential and battling bureaucracy
Robert G Carrington, President, CEO and Director of the Colombian Mines Corporation shares his perspective as an entrepreneur seeking to develop the economic and social potential of a country whose government's indifference continually stymies precious metals mining.
Robert G Carrington is a man of expereince when it comes to mining and is a three-decade industry veteran, Carrington applies his expertise daily as a registered engineering geologist with a degree from the Mackay School of Mines and Geology in Reno, Nevada. Carrington has taken part in the dis- covery of deposits containing more than 22 million ounces of gold, in sites such as what is now Newmont Mining’s Twin Creeks mine in Nevada. He has also pioneered the exploration and development of gold mining projects in Colombia. In a discussion with IFLR1000, Carrington shared his per- spective as an entrepreneur seeking to develop the economic and social po- tential of a country whose government’s bureaucratic lassitude continually gets in the way.
There is so much interest in mining in Colombia right now. From your perspective, are there any disadvantages to operating there? Colombia has got a lot of things going for it, it’s one of the most prospective regions on earth, the government is conservative by Latin standards, they really want direct foreign investment, they want to develop their resources, and they want companies to come and share the technologies they have. They just do not understand the value of time. Without regulatory reform, it makes it tough on foreign companies operating there.
The Colombian government is so backlogged because everybody is care-
less about processing these things. There is no penalty for government em- ployees if they don’t do their job, so they have over 14,000 pending applications, and there’s been a two-year moratorium on submitting new applications.
If you’re working in an environmentally sensitive area, you have other is- sues to deal with, such as showing regulators you will not adversely impact
70 ENERGY & INFRASTRUCTURE | LATIN AMERICA 2013
the environment with your exploration. The biggest issue is getting the min- eral title, known in Colombia as a Contrato de Concession or a Concession Contract. In theory the process is to apply for an area, and then by law they have 180 days to issue, deny or otherwise adjudicate the concession contract. We have applications now that have been pending since 2007. Without the mineral title or Concession Contract you can not apply for water diversion or discharge permits, which means you cannot conduct any meaningful ex- ploration such as drilling.
If you could enact one regulatory reform in Colombia, what would it be? It would be a law providing for a default issuance of permits and mineral ti- tles. The law would kick in when a regulatory agency exceeds the allotted time to issue a permit. Permitting is part of modern mining. Most legislation in every jurisdiction says that a given agency has X number of months to process a permit request, approve it, deny it, or ask for more information. Typically the law goes one step further, so that if the agency does not do this, the permit issues by default and somebody in the agency gets his or her hand slapped for not acting on a timely basis, but the industry is not held hostage through inaction. Here is the biggest problem we grapple with in Colombia—their laws say we’ll issue this permit in X number of days. But the laws don’t say you’ll get the permit by default. Colombian Mines still has pending applications for mineral titles launched in January 2007 which under Colombian law, the regulatory agency should have had 180 days to process. I guess they just didn’t tell us which 180 days.
Typically, in the US, certainly in Nevada, one of the biggest mining cen-
ters, the regulatory framework is such that when you apply for your air qual- ity or water quality permits, you name it, the law says the agency has this
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