Middle East digs deep to attract investors in mining

The Middle East's mining industry is overhauling its laws, incentives and projects to attract foreign investment to this largely untapped sector, speakers at the Middle East and North African (MENA) Mining Congress said yesterday. Post-revolution Egypt will release a new mining code within a year designed to attract investors to its vast gold reserves in the Western Desert, previously neglected by the previous regime for political reasons, said Fekry Yousuf, Chairman of the Egyptian Mineral Resources Authority (EMRA). "Investors prefer coming to Egypt because they can work year-round in the mines. There are no tribal issues as in other African countries, where the tribes living near the mines tell companies they cannot work there." Egypt expects its gold reserves to be 25 million ounces and it has 14.5 million ounces of proven reserves, he noted. Mining contributes just one per cent of Egypt's gross domestic product, but EMRA plans to increase it by eight to nine per cent in the next two years, he said. Of the $8.7 billion (Dh31.9 billion) of direct investment that Egypt received last year, only 4.5 per cent went into mining.