IKN

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The bullshit you’re going to get from Argentina at PDAC

This from IKN403, out last Sunday:

Argentina: The Federal Mining Agreement in the spotlight
Last week,
much to the dismay of the Macri government and the secretary of mining Daniel
Meilan in charge of the initiative, a draft copy of the Federal Mining
Agreement (FMA) was leaked and published on Argentina’s trade paper site, Mining
Press (15). That link will take you to a PDF of the whole thing (stamped
confidential on each of its 18 pages) so peruse it at you own leisure. What I
can tell you after reading the draft a couple of times is that the document is
a poor sort of agreement in real terms. What they’ve clearly tried to do is get
an agreement to which even the most reactionary and traditionally anti-mining
provinces of Argentina such as Mendoza, Rio Negro, Tierra del Fuego and Chubut
can agree to. Which is fine, as above all the national government wants a piece
of paper signed by all 23 provinces of the country which they can then show to
the world (the plan is to have it signed before PDAC and show it there) and
say, “Hey everybody! Argentina is now one big flat level playing field! We all
agree on mining!”.

Which is, of course, bullshit. The lax wording
of the document may indeed allow places like Chubut to sign on (though it’s
still not a certainty), but when they try the next stage of taking this Federal
Mining Agreement (FMA) to the national Congress and designing laws that will govern
mining over the whole country, the reaction of any province that doesn’t like
any of the clauses the nation tries to shove down its throat will be
predictable and obvious, “We didn’t agree to that!”, and the whole FMA is shown
to be the worthless document that it is. Style over substance, it’s the Argentine
way.

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