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Investors deterred by SA’s regulatory environment - David McKay, Miningmx
In an interview on 702 @ 18:25 on Wednesday, 8 February 2006
[miningmx.com] -- David McKay, editor of Miningmx.com, said that the conduct of the South African Minister of Minerals and Energy Lindiwe Hendricks was not helping the country’s decreasing ability to attract mining investors to the country.
McKay was speaking on week nightly business show, The World at Six, broadcast on Radio 702.
“Of all the companies at the Indaba only six are South African,” he said. “All the money seems to be going north of the border and it seems international companies are looking at the [SA] regulatory environment and deciding it’s not for them.”
“The Minister is also not helping,” he said. “She arrived forty minutes late for a briefing yesterday and offered no apology, while today she didn’t show up at all.”
Mckay also said that investors were showing “huge interest” in the DRC, which was looking increasingly like the “next
Ghana.”
“There’s a real sense that if you can get in now you will probably get your value.”
McKay also commented on the day’s US$20/oz fall in the gold price.
“It seems at least partly because Greenspan has linked the gold price strength directly to various cyclical instabilities but it also has to do with a Barclays analyst’s estimate that the gold price could fall to as low as US$350/oz, which is massively lower than where it is now.”
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