Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Economic reality (whatever that is) will not trump political reality. The potential political fallout from the mine remains the primary consideration for Hasina, and that has always been the case, and remains so, according to my updated information. Like it or not, fear of civil unrest continues to weigh on the decision making. One can but hope that things (or minds) will change after the election.
My views remain basically unchanged, and based on a long-standing and first hand experience of both the project and the country. Hasina remains a roadblock. There is a considerable amount of pressure building to push for the mine to happen but there are - as yet - no clear indications that she has dropped her opposition to the project. With elections in the offing and her son a likely successor there is some hope value that things could change - hence the rise in the share price which has virtually tripled from its low base (clever investors who piled in). Expectations will likely fuel further increases but the rise is mainly founded on a four letter word - hope.
Not necessarily so. There would still be a potential mine; just the licence wouldn't be foreign/GCM owned. If Hasina buckles and let's the mine happen, this ruse is one way forward for her. We are after all investing in Bangladesh.
For a more challenging assessment of the upcoming elections, try this!
https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/why-is-bangladesh-even-bothering-to-hold-elections/
And as for whether Hasina will change her mind - that is the million dollar question. At the technocrat level, the proposed mine ticks all the boxes, but Hasina may well conclude that it's still too much of a political timebomb.
All to play for ...
It's shaping up to be a one-sided, one-legged race, with Hasina and her Awami League (AL) standing for a fourth consecutive term and the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotting the poll arguing that it will be rigged and unfair. The BNP has faced a massive clampdown in recent months with some 10,000 activists arrested. The largest Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) opposition party has been banned from the election. While the outcome of the vote is predictable, the likelihood of street violence is high. The situation is volatile, but in terms of realpolitk Hasina has the firepower - at least for now.
Bangla - I fear you are right. Even if she decides to approve the mine there is still the mighty political challenge of the license. The hard left and opponents of the project have never accepted the 'foreign' ownership of the resource - notwithstanding that it was 'foreign' money (i.e. us shareholders) who invested risk capital in testing and proving the resource in accordance with a government granted and endorsed licence. There is then the Green Wave and also the logistics - the proposed mine is the wrong end of the country for most of the coal-fired power stations. That said, I think this is worth a punt in the run-up to the elections. The hope value, at the very least, will increase.
Me too. I commissioned the video and steered it through production. Those were the golden days when the project was taking wings. Unfortunately it ran into Bangladeshi politics and Bungla bureaucracy, and it hit the buffers in an obdurate PM Hasina where it is still stuck.
The two deposits are contiguous, and mining logic always pointed to them merging with Phulbari into one big open cut mine. Bangla being Bungla, of course, the Barapukuria power station sits right on top of the resource so that would have to be demolished - not in itself a big issue, given the potential scale of what could be a mega mining operation. But this is Bungladesh, not Bangladesh, and so it won't happen that way - certainly not in Hasina's reign.
The key to this pidgin English report is that it was never going to be possible to extract more than 10 per cent of the total deposit at Barapukuria by underground mining. If you want more, you have to go open cut, and then you are back to square one - digging a big hole and displacing a large number of rice farmers. Any sensible government would have long ago determined that - properly managed with a plan to mine and make good with compensation and backfill - open cast was a price worth paying. That way you can extract up to 90 per cent of the deposit. However, common sense has not prevailed so far in Hasina's glorious reign. Don't hold your horses, or for that matter don't shoulder your shovels!
A very sober but accurate assessment. Many have believed for a long time that litigation is the only recourse. There seems to be no other way to recover or seek compensation for all that money invested in proving a resource under terms of a government contract which the host country has consistently refused to honour.