The investment pledged by Romanian-Canadian joint venture Rosia Montana Gold in Rosia Montana, which the Romanian authorities say amounts to about $400 million, has come to a deadlock. To start works, more than 600 houses and eight churches in the area will have to be moved.
The locals do not fully agree to being moved, although they were promised reimbursements. They refuse to endorse the relocation, which delays the General Urban Development Plan that would allow continuing the feasibility study. The investor and local authorities have turned to the Government for help in solving this situation.
Prime Minister Adrian Nastase decided to dispatch several secretaries of state to talk things through with the people and explain the benefits of the investment to them. The discussions took a whole afternoon and in the end produced nothing.
The state secretary within the Ministry of Development and Prognostics, Mihai David, showed the people that mining, as it is now, has no prospects in Romania. “We’ll be closing more than 270 mines across the country this year.
The international agreements we signed bound us to cut subsidisation by 20% annually. We’re talking an over $400 million investment here, the biggest in the whole Europe and the second largest in the world, in metal mining. If this investment does not proceed, mining in Rosia Montana area will be extinct five years from now,” David said.
Daniel Andronache, representative of MINVEST National Company, partner of Gabriel Resources in setting up Rosia Montana Gold, in his turn claimed that the survival of the mine without subsidisation is out of the question.
For instance, it takes 600,000 lei to produce one gramme of gold, whose sale price reaches about 220,000 lei. Subsidisation covers 1,000 lei, while the losses per 1,000 lei commodity output amount to 3,000 lei. Alba County prefect Ioan Rus informed the villagers that the PM and the county authorities regard the investment as the best opportunity in the entire county, let alone the commune.
“Along with the new jobs and a secure life, an infrastructure to allow establishing other businesses, such as tourism, will develop,” Rus feels.
None of the above convinced the people, though. They said they would not agree until someone discusses with every single one of them separately. The mayor of the commune, however, said he was optimistic. He believes that the “person-to-person” approach he will take over the next few days will work, no matter how hard-headed people may be.