Government and United States Company Global Venture yesterday inked a US$1.8 million (approximately $374 million) agreement for a one year, on-the-ground mineral mapping exercise here and announced that the company gave a 5% discount from its original US$1.9 million bid.
With $400 million budgeted this year for the project, Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat yesterday said that the one year duration where four key areas would be mapped was just one phase in the government’s overall plans for the mapping of this country’s mineral resources to obtain cutting edge target detection.
“This project is for one year and we focused on four main mining districts, being Mazaruni, Potaro, Northwest and Cuyuni. We did those and not Rupununi or Berbice for a number of reasons but mainly environmental sustainability as we don’t do too much mining in those areas… and most of the mining occurs in these four anyway,” he explained.