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Gov’t to unblock stalled Eldorado Gold mining investment project

Mitsotakis government is determined to unblock big investment projects with two of them being Ellinikon at Athens Riviera and the other one the Eldorado mining project in Halkidiki, North Greece. While the Prime Minister is meeting with Spyros Latsis on Elliniko n Project, his energy minister Kostis Hatzidakis met with Canada’s Eldorado Gold executives two days earlier.

Greece’s recently-elected government wants a stalled gold mine investment by Canada’s Eldorado to be revived, Hatzidakis said, reuters notes.

Vancouver-based Eldorado has two operating mines and two development projects in northern Greece but has struggled with permit delays at one location, Skouries, for years.

Its planned investment in Greece has been viewed as one of the biggest in the country in years.

Eldorado halted construction in November 2017 at Skouries, which has reserves of 3.7 million ounces of gold and 1.7 billion pounds of copper, citing mainly environmental permit delays.

“We want this investment to come to life. We want to tie up loose ends,” Energy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis told Skai TV. “It is a New Democracy commitment,” he said, referring to the ruling party.

Hatzidakis was speaking after he and his deputy met with Eldorado’s president and CEO George Burns and other executives.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s conservative government took over this month from leftist former prime minister Alexis Tsipras, on pledges to attract more investment into the economy.

The energy ministry said the government “underlined its will to support the investment with respect, of course, to all environmental terms.”

Greece accounts for 42 per cent of Eldorado’s operating net asset value.

In September, the company said it would seek 750 million euros (US$836 million) from the government in damages it attributed to the delays.

PS No wonder US conservatives like from gatestone think tank praise Mitsotakis as one who ” deserves a chance at home and abroad to prove that opening up the economy while clamping down on forces that threaten Greek democracy can undo the damage done by years of socialist rule” and are cheered that he leads “a single-party government … which means that it will not be forced to compromise with Marxists and Social Democrats.”

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