Guyana’s mining and natural resources sector is expected to be enhanced following discussions with its South African counterpart on ways to develop the sector and eliminate challenges faced in obtaining resources.
South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources, Godfrey Oliphant, would have met with Natural Resources Minister, Raphael Trotman, during a meeting on Monday, which also featured officials from the Guyana Gold Board, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Guyana Forestry Commission.
The two countries are looking at ways to strengthen their bilateral relationship, especially in the area of mining and during the five-day visit, Oliphant is slated to interact with various officials to come up with ways through which both countries can deepen their relationship through the mining industry.
Both Ministers were briefed on how resources are extracted in each other’s country. This exchange of information was considered vital, given the fact that South Africa was once the largest gold producer in the world.
After initial discussions with his South African counterpart, Minister Trotman told media operatives that there are many ways in which Guyana can benefit from this relationship. First, the country can provide information on how to tackle some challenges which it faced. Additionally, the possibility looms for persons associated with this sector to be exposed to “first world” training.
“There are three areas which we wish to benefit from it. South Africa is a very large, complex and exciting place but it brings experiences of how they have overcome some of the challenges we’re facing so we hope to expose our staff at the GGMC, the Gold Board and at the policy level to experience first world training.”
He also noted that the mindset is to strengthen overall ties between the nations whereby agencies can strike a relationship to assist each other and investments can surface.
“We hope to deepen the exchanges between the two countries at a Government to Government level, and at the institutional level, the counterpart in the GGMC would be able to relate to its counterpart in South Africa. Thirdly, we would want to invite investments from South Africa to Guyana. We believe that financially, South Africa has experience in mining gold and diamonds in particular,” said Trotman.
Apart from the mining industry, the Minister is of the belief that assistance can be provided in a number of other areas, including education.
“A number of areas are being looked at in terms of education, culture, industry. I know that those will be pursued.”
Throughout the engagement, ideas surfaced for the possibility of offshore diamond mining and other advanced techniques for mining resources.
While one of Guyana’s challenges is illegal mining, the African country is being faced with a significantly high depth of its resources, sometimes kilometres deep.
Guyana and South Africa established diplomatic relations on November 4, 1994.
