Indonesia to approve 70 mining contracts

Indonesia to approve 70 mining contracts

TOKYO (Reuter): Indonesia is expected to grant final approval
later this month to 70 applications from foreign firms and joint
ventures for Contracts of Work (CoWs) to explore and develop
mineral deposits, Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, Indonesia's Director
General of Mines, said yesterday.

He told a seminar organized by the Metal Mining Agency of
Japan that the applicants for the so-called sixth generation of
CoWs included Canada's Bre-X Minerals Ltd, whose massive Busang
deposit on Kalimantan is estimated to hold 46 million ounces or
more of gold reserves.

"The sixth generation will be signed by the President by the
end of this month," Kuntoro told the seminar.

He added that he hoped the seventh generation of CoWs, issued
two months ago, would get final approval by January.

He said the seventh generation CoWs were similar to the sixth,
although they provide for more stringent monitoring and control
of the contractor's performance while allowing more flexibility
on the time frame for exploration.

Kuntoro also noted that Bre-X's find had sparked a rush of
applications for CoWs on Kalimantan, which accounted for 132 out
of 186 seventh generation CoW applications compared with 28 out
of 70 in the sixth generation.

He said that there were at present about 300 CoW applications
in the pipeline, both for mineral and coal exploration.