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President Basescu: Time is ripe for us to resume open pit gold or copper mining
President Traian Basescu said on Friday in remarks delivered at the Cotroceni presidential palace that it is high time Romania resumed open pit mining, be it for the exploitation of either copper or gold resources.
'The time is ripe for us to resume open pit mining, be it for gold or copper, because global prices have now turned profitable activities which were no longer so 10-15 years ago, when they were halted,' Basescu said.
He mentioned that he failed to persuade both the former and the current government of the need to take such action.
'I am not pleading for one solution or another, if the government decides to exploit the gold and copper by investments of its own, let it make such investments. If it decides that partnering a foreign investor is a better solution, let it do so. But we cannot idle along any more without creating new jobs, because job generation is the only way to plug the pension fund deficit,' Basescu concluded.