The coal production was reduced in 53%, according to numbers offered by the Mining Camera of Venezuela (Enio Perdomo/file)

The Mining Camera of Venezuela (Camiven) reports considerable reductions in the industrial activity of the metallic and nonmetallic mining from the country to the 2009 closing.

Gilberto Sanchez Albornoz, president of the organism, indicated that with regard to the metallic mining a fall of 35% in the mineral production was observed of iron and 53% in the coal, whereas the gold stayed stable with respect to 2008. “The General Company of Mining of Venezuela (Minerven), assigned to the Ministry of Basic Industries and Mining (Mibam), informed that it was going to produce 8 tons of gold and arrived at 4.5 tons”.

As far as the nonmetallic and industrial mining of the country, this one registered a diminution of 30% when confronting 2009 and 2008. It explained that segment is represented by the coal, cement, feldspar, limestone, dolomita, granite, marble, silica, clay, granzón, gravel and sandboxes, fundamental for the development of the manufacture, the construction and the aggregation of value in the local transforming companies.

The reform of the mining laws in the majority of the States of the country, indicated, affected of determining way the negative behavior of that economic activity. “The changes in those legislative texts, draconianer than others, reached on the part of the governors, have paralyzed the production of minerals nonmetalists”.

It explained that in those reforms “the conformation of mixed companies is demanded, through which the State has 60 or 80% of the actions, when previously that majority participation corresponded to the national or international private capital; this includes the processes of estatización of the cementeras and concreteras”.

“Now”, Albornoz said to Sanchez, “the nongovernmental company is retiring and the State is not in capacity to make the investments that before were reserved the private ones”, hitting the levels of production of those headings.

The authorities also have decided “not to give to concessions but contracts of operation or association to Companies of Producción Social (EPS)”.

This scheme was proposed in a project of reform to the Law of Mines, in 2007, before the National Assembly.

Unexpected variant

According to the president of the Camera, the present electrical crisis will cause that sector is contracted by third consecutive year: in 2008 it lowered 18% with respect to 2007; in 2009 a 30% against 2008 and this year “I cannot need its impact, but it will be of weight”.

The economy is in recession like the internal demand, referred. “If to it we added this new factor to him, that is the electrical crisis, the production of iron and steel companies, of ceramic, refractory they will be contracted”, to mention some.

It indicated that the companies of continuous production like Sidor, that operate with high refractory furnaces and, “need electricity and gas to produce and, exactly, both factors are absent.

“If the plants do not make the lines of production for which they are designed, also must be hot and the synchronization of its machines must so be, that it does not affect its structures”, said S´anchez when talking about to the heavy and light industries.

It insisted on which it will depend on the dimension of the electrical crisis, the effect in the national mining activity.

Mariela Leon
THE UNIVERSAL ONE