According to bnamerica website, some members of Peru’s ruling Liberal Party submitted a bill last Thursday (2nd), proposing to nationalize the development of copper mines and establish a state-owned enterprise to operate Las bambas copper mine, which accounts for 2% of the world’s output.

The bill numbered 2259 was proposed by Margot Palacios, a member of the far left Liberal Party, to “regulate the development of existing copper resources in Peruvian territory”. Peru’s copper reserves are estimated to be 91.7 million tons.

Therefore, paragraph 4 of the act proposes to establish a national copper company. According to the private law, the company is a legal entity with exclusive exploration, development, sales and other rights.

However, the act stipulates that the current costs of repairing mining damage and existing liabilities are “the responsibility of the company that produces these consequences”.

The act also empowers the company to “renegotiate all existing contracts to suit existing regulations”.

In Article 15, the act also proposes to establish a state-owned banbas company to operate exclusively the copper mines of indigenous communities such as huancuire, pumamarca, choaquere, chuicuni, fuerabamba and chila in the province of Kota banbas in the region of aprimak.

To be exact, these communities are currently confronting the Minmetals resources company (MMG), which operates Las bambas copper mine. They accuse MMG of not fulfilling its social development commitments and have forced the production of Las bambas copper mine to stop for 50 days.

Workers from MMG marched in Lima, Cusco and Arequipa. An í BAL Torres believed that the reason for the conflict was that community members refused to sit down and negotiate.

However, mining companies in other regions are affected by social conflicts because they are accused of polluting the environment or without prior consultation with surrounding communities.

The bill proposed by the Liberal Party also proposed to allocate 3billion sols (about 800million US dollars) to the proposed national copper company as expenses for different subordinate institutions.

In addition, Article 10 also stipulates that private enterprises currently in production will conduct valuation to determine their net worth, debt reduction, tax exemption and welfare, “the value of underground resources, profit remittance and environmental remediation costs that have not yet been paid”.

The act emphasizes that enterprises “should ensure that the activities under production cannot be interrupted”.

The board of directors of the company includes three representatives from the Ministry of energy and mineral resources, two representatives from the Universidad Nacional mayor de San Marcos, two representatives from the mining Faculty of the Universidad Nacional, and six representatives from indigenous people or communities.

It is understood that after the proposal is submitted to various committees of the Congress for debate, the final implementation still needs to be approved by the Congress.