Andean Group - February 2015 (ISSN 1741-4466)

President Rafael Correa created a mining ministry by executive decree on 13 February. Javier Córdova Unda assumes the new position. Córdova had been deputy minister for non-renewable resources, which has been renamed the hydrocarbons ministry. The creation of a standalone mining ministry is calculated to give renewed impetus to the mining sector at a time when Ecuador’s economy faces the prospect of a slowdown with the precipitate plunge in oil prices.

There are five major ‘strategic’ mining projects that have been in the pipeline in Ecuador since 2010. None of them have entered the production phase yet but Córdova expressed his confidence that 2015 would be a breakthrough year for the mining sector.

The most advanced of the five projects is the El Mirador open-pit copper mine in the southern Amazonian province of Zamora Chinchipe. It is three years since President Correa announced Ecuador’s first large-scale mining project in March 2012, when the Chinese company, Ecuacorriente, agreed to invest US$1.4bn in El Mirador.

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