The Ministry of Economy and Energy and the concessionaire of Chelopech gold mine are in talks to raise the concession fee by 10 per cent and to reinstate the state as a shareholder in the mine, Bulgarian Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov told members of Parliament (MPs) on February 29, mediapool.bg reported.
The ongoing talks were started at the initiative of Environment and Waters Minister Djevdet Chakurov, who insisted that the state recovered a stake in the mine and use the dividend to finance environmental projects.
The state and Canadian Dundee Precious Metals, which bought the Chelopech concession from the Irish Navan Mining, have been at loggerheads over plans of the Canadian company to expand extraction and processing works at the mine. Chakurov has blocked the 300 million leva investment with his silent refusal despite the fact that the investment got the hail of the Supreme Expert Environmental Council and despite the Supreme Administrative Court having urged the minister to come up either with approval or substantiated refusal for the project.
“Re-nationalisation” was a no-go option for former minister of economy and energy Roumen Ovcharov, as it also was for the Deputy Prime Minister of Economy Ivailo Kalfin. Media speculated that the shift in the opinion might be the consequence of a broader agreement between the leaderships of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, both from the ruling coalition.
Dimitrov would not specify the way in which re-nationalisation would occur, nor what share of the mine the state would want back. The minister said, though, that if the state agreed to Dundee's investment plans, the state might want a 10 per cent share of the mine.
As reported earlier, problems in Bulgaria prompted Dundee to file a complaint with the European Commission on April 23 last year. At present, the EC is reviewing the case. If it rules in favour of Dundee, Brussels will file a lawsuit against the Bulgarian state for default on commitments in the EU accession treaty.
