The Minister of Commerce, Federico Alvaro, assures that the contract protects 8,000 direct jobs and 40,000 indirect jobs.
The mining company contributes 4% of Panama’s GDP and exports about 300,000 tons of copper concentrate each year from Puerto Rincón, where protesters arrived in a dozen boats on Saturday.
In a statement, the company stated that this protest represented a “threat” to its operations and its personnel, but did not comment on the turbulent situation in the country.
And what is the environmental one?
Panama has large copper reserves in Cerro Colorado, in the west of the country, and in Donoso, in the Caribbean province of Colón, where the gigantic open pit mine is located, 240 kilometers from the capital.
For environmentalist Raisa Banfield, it is “disastrous that one of the most destructive and polluting activities takes place in a small country that in one hour connects two oceans through its rivers and tropical forests.”
“Thousands of hectares are being destroyed, hills, mountains, even rivers that are becoming the laundry for the industry,” he told AFP.
Part of Panama’s mineral deposits are in important biodiversity areas such as the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor.
“This project opens a gap in the corridor that will have an impact on the ecological connectivity between North and South America,” George Hanily, director of the National Conservation Association (ANCON), told AFP.