According to Sambú, in office since last December, at the moment the bauxite exploration license "is free".
"Bauxite was previously licensed to an Angolan company, but according to what I was told, the company did not have the economic means to continue exploration and abandoned it," said Malam Sambú, in an interview with Lusa about the situation in the Natural Resources sector.
Geological studies indicate that Guinea-Bissau will have in the historic town of Boé, where the country's independence was proclaimed unilaterally by Portugal in 1973, more than 113 million tons of bauxite, the main natural source of aluminum.
In 2007, the Guinean Government granted an exploration license for that ore to Bauxite Angola, a mixed company under Angolan law, which would interrupt prospecting work, which began in April 2012, following a coup d'état in Guinea-Bissau. .
Since then, Bauxite Angola has tried to return several times, but the project never progressed again, until in December 2022, the Guinean Government announced, in the Council of Ministers, the termination of the contract under which it had granted a license. of exploration to that company.
"Right now bauxite is free, it is free, but there is a lot of competition. There is Chinese interest, there is Russian interest, there is American interest, and I was told there is also a French company that has expressed interest", added the Minister of Natural Resources.
