About 27% of Active Mining Permits in 2018 Didn’t Work at All

TIRANA, August 16

Official data reported by the mining companies, to the National Agency of Natural Resources show that last year, 27.3% of subjects with an active permit for mining exploitation, has not worked a single day. In total, the number of active subjects in 2018, was 604, which results that even though 165 of them have a permit from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Energy for mining exploitation, they have not carried them out.

Other data show that the number of subjects which have done self-declarations, according to legal requirements through the online portal, is 570, whilst a smaller part has submitted this data at the protocol. From a general insight of details that the subjects have given, it results that those that have produced are 424 subjects in total, 201 of which have made investments in the area where they carry out their mining activities.

A smaller part of subjects is categorized only in the investment sector last year, mainly related to the new mining permits given via the competitive procedures, which initially have to invest to access the sites that will then be exploited. In total, from all the mining companies that have reported, it results that are employed 6473 employees, from which only 4666 of them are insured.

The same statistics show that the permits are given for different activities and exploitation of different minerals. Regarding the exploitation of chrome, until the end of 2018, there active 255 permits, where 50 of them were without production. The total production of all the subjects for 2018 was 1 million tones, for the chrome concentrate 66.000 tones and ferrochrome 92.800 tones. In iron-nickel exploitation, there were active 26 permits, where 16 of them were without production, whereas the active permits produced 385.000 tones. Lastly, in 2018, in copper exploitation, there were active 13 permits, and the production was 236.000 tones.

According to the latest instruction, approved by the Albanian Financial Supervisory Authority, starting from September 1st. 2019, all of the companies that own an active mining permit are obliged to equip their employees with life insurance policies.

Source/Monitor.al

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