MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Morales announces 2007 nationalization of mining industry

President Evo Morales

Bolivian President Evo Morales renewed his pledge to nationalize his country's mining industry, saying he would complete the task this year.

Morales who participated Wednesday in the inauguration of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega said the mining industry was the next privatization he wanted to reverse. ''Last year we nationalized hydrocarbons,'' he said. ''This year it will be mining.'' Elected a year ago as Bolivia's first indigenous president, Morales nationalized his country's extensive natural gas reserves on May 1, assuming a greater share of their revenues and control over their Bolivian operations. This month, he nationalized Bolivia's water utility Aguas de Illimani. During the last decade and under pressure from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, former President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada privatized a wide range of Bolivian industry including oil and gas, water, power, railroad and telecommunications sectors, as well as the national airline and pension plan. However the privatization had mixed results, failing to create new jobs and prepared the field for Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism. But Bolivian mines remained in the hands of the state. A worldwide collapse of tin prices in the mid eighties prompted the state mining company Comibol to lay off tens of thousands of miners and shut operations at many of its mines. As the market recovered during the nineties, the Bolivian government granted concessions at idle state mines to both local miners' cooperatives and foreign mining companies. By ''nationalization'' Morales appears to be moving ahead with plans that would ultimately see the state benefit more from mineral exports as has happened to a great extent with the oil and gas industry. Last week Bolivian Mining Minister Guillermo Dalence proposed a sharp hike in taxes on concessions at state mines. Mining is Bolivia's second source of export income behind natural gas representing almost a billion US dollars in 2006.