The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

A Cabinet minister yesterday clarified that the Government could earn $2.5m annually from a single aragonite mining licence, with that figure not representative of its true value to The Bahamas.

Romauld Ferreira, minister of the environment and housing, said: "It is the collection of licence fees where the Government makes its money from aragonite. The Government is not in the business of mining aragonite to either primary, secondary or tertiary grade processing. It is simply collecting fees from people that do.

"The potential for that, a study conducted by ourselves, our technical team and a technical team from the Commonwealth Secretariat said, is that we could make approximately $2.5m per licence.

"That doesn't not mean that the resource of aragonite is only worth $2.5m. It means that if you are a potential licensee in a differentiated class licensee system, you would pay approximately that amount."

Mr Ferreira said studies had shown there were vast quantities of aragonite in The Bahamas. "The geological reports determine the quantity of aragonite available in The Bahamas," he explained. "In The Bahamas there are vast quantities of aragonite. They are scattered throughout the country, essentially in pits in the seabed.

"The study looked at about a dozen sites to determine the amount of aragonite and how fast the aragonite is precipitating. Aragonite is a form of calcium carbonate that precipitates out of the ocean. Those studies determined that the quantities are vast, but different locations throughout The Bahamas have different precipitation rates or rates of formation. Those rates vary between 150 years and 2,000 years for one of these grains to form."

Responding to criticisms as to why the Government has appeared slow in seeking to capitalise on natural resources, Mr Ferreira stressed that government policy must be informed by science.

"Before you can ever hope to exploit a resource, you must first understand it. You must understand where the deposits are and how long they took to get there. Before you launch into widespread commercial exploitation you must understand the nature of the resource," he said.