CHARTS: The coming critical minerals trade war is BRICS short of a load
"While a large number of countries around the world continue to talk about securing raw material supply, China is actually doing something about it."
“During last year’s election campaign, Sebastián Piñera, who became Chile’s president in March, often criticised Codelco, the country’s state-owned copper company, for its inefficiency, griping over its stagnant output and climbing costs.
Yet it was engineers from Codelco who stood beside him this month as the 33 miners trapped since August 5th in the privately owned San José copper and gold mine in northern Chile were hoisted to safety. … Other big mining companies helped with advice and equipment. But Mr Piñera looked to Codelco, which runs the world’s biggest underground copper mine in El Teniente, to lead the rescue operation.
Today, Codelco still mines over a tenth of the world’s copper, but it has seen its share of Chile’s output dwindle from 75% in 1990 to 32% last year. … For the past decade, its production has been stuck at around 1.6m tonnes (although it reached 1.8m tonnes last year), while more expensive inputs and overstaffing have pushed up costs. Its stagnation is largely the fault of past governments that, eager for tax revenues, short-changed the company’s investment budget.”
Source: The Economist, October 21 2010
Observations:
Implications:
©2010 | Wilfred Visser | thebusinessofmining.com
