 FREETOWN (Reuters) - Foreign mining companies must build new roads, railways
and ports in Sierra Leone which will benefit the country's poor if they want to
extract its precious minerals, the mining minister said.
After largely peaceful elections this year in the former British colony, torn
apart by a brutal 1991-2002 civil war, foreign firms are once again starting to
consider mineral-rich Sierra Leone as a possible investment destination.
"We are trying to create a situation in which mines can be the basis for our
infrastructure development," Mines Minister Alhaji Abubakarr Jalloh told
reporters late on Thursday.
"We are saying if you want to mine bauxite, iron ore, rutile, we want all
these companies to come together and create a plan for a massive harbour that
will have the capacity to take big ships and to have a railway system and a
future network."
Many mining companies are waiting for details of the new government's mining
strategy, expected to be unveiled early next year, following presidential
elections in September.
Several mining companies are wary of potential moves to impose more strenuous
conditions, including higher tax.
"We are going to look at all the things and modify them for the good of the
country," said Jalloh, who has promised to review all mining contracts in an
effort to extract more wealth for the country.
The West African state's diamond fields helped finance the conflict both at
home and in neighbouring Liberia, wars which together killed a quarter of a
million people and destroyed once-thriving economies.
Jalloh said he wanted dilapidated roads and
railways to be rebuilt along routes leading, for example, from the capital
Freetown to bauxite mines in Port Loko and Kambia districts or to iron ore
deposits in the north.
Demand for African natural resources is booming, not least from rapidly
industrialising China and India who need the raw materials to develop their
economies.
NEW PRESIDENT, NEW CHAPTER
Sierra Leoneans hope their new president, Ernest Bai Koroma, elected on a
promise of greater prosperity for the country, will help turn around their
fortunes.
Five years after the end of the war, Sierra Leone ranks as the least
developed country in the world, according to the United Nations. More than 70
percent of the population live below the poverty line.
Voters complained bitterly of appalling roads pitted with potholes during the
election campaign. The railway line has long been defunct. Many hope a
well-managed mining policy could revitalise that infrastructure.
Jalloh said previous such efforts had served only the needs of mining
companies and the country was in danger of falling prey to the same kind of
exploitation from new mining companies.
"All sorts of companies are coming in; they want to take the remnants (of old
mines) and just load the barges. We will be left with the same problem we have
now," he said.
"They built these railways and the harbour purely to convey the iron ore.
There are still trucks that are loaded with iron ore on the railways from when
they stopped."
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