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Development of Amulsar gold mine to start in 2024 - deputy minister

19.12.2023, 18:37
The development of the Amulsar gold deposit in Armenian Vayots Dzor province will start in 2024, Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Hovhannes Harutyunyan said on Tuesday.
Development of Amulsar gold mine to start in 2024 - deputy minister

YEREVAN, December 19. /ARKA/. The development of the Amulsar gold deposit in Armenian Vayots Dzor province will start in 2024, Deputy Minister of Territorial Administration and Infrastructure Hovhannes Harutyunyan said on Tuesday.

"At the moment, there is a team working at the Amulsar deposit, which is tasked to relaunch the development process," Harutyunyan told reporters.

The deputy minister also reminded that the construction work in Amulsar was suspended for several years due to environmentalists' protests.

'It was necessary to understand: whether to continue the work from where it was stopped, or to destroy the existing engineering infrastructures to build new ones. The deadline for the above preparatory work is the end of December," he informed.

On February 22, 2023, a trilateral memorandum of understanding was signed between the Armenian government, the Eurasian Development Bank and Lydian Armenia CJSC, under which the parties pledged to invest about $150 million in the development of the Amulsar gold mine. According to the memorandum, the Armenian government is to receive 12.5% of the company's shares. 

After signing the memorandum, Economy Minister Vahan Kerobyan stated that the operation of Amulsar mine would provide the government budget with annual revenues of 30-40 billion drams.

Meanwhile, on December 14, Senior Executive Director of the Eurasian Development Bank Denis Ilyin said that the final decision on whether to invest in the Amulsar mine or not has not been made yet.

Amulsar gold mine is Armenia's second–largest gold mine in terms of pure gold reserves. It is located in the southeast of the country, 13 km from Jermuk resort town, between rivers Arpa and Vorotan. The deposit contains about 31 million tons of ore and 40 tons of pure gold.

Lydian Armenia (established in 2005, a 100% subsidiary of Lydian Canada Ventures owned by the American Orion Mine Finance and Canada's Osisko Gold Royalties) was not able to develop the Amulsar mine in full due to protests by environmentalists and residents of the neighboring communities. --0--