The Colombian mining agency works to clear up its mining permit backlog

The Colombian business journal Portafolio reported that the Colombian National Mining Agency (ANM) plans to review 770 applications for mining permits in just the first two months of this year. This year marks a change in the audit process for mining titles: in the past, it was contracted out to a private company, but now the ANM will do them itself. ANM President Natalia Gutiérrez explained, “This process includes a document review, field visits, a review of technical, legal, environmental, and economic aspects, and security.”

In a separate article, Portafolio reported that the backlog of applications for mining concessions awaiting processing by the ANM currently numbers 8,406. The backlog has increased since May 2013, when it numbered 7,066 cases. The ANM, and the Colombian ministries of the Interior, Mining, the Environment, and Agriculture, are working to come to an agreement to speed up the process and clear the bottleneck. However, there appears to be a conflict with a law passed by the Colombian Constitutional Court in March 2014.

In unrelated news, the National Mining Agency announced that just 17 percent of silver oil and gold extracted in Colombia comes from mining projects with a valid mining permit. This statistic just goes to show the staggering scale of illegal mining in Colombia. This activity is concentrated in three Colombian departments: Antioquia, Caldas, and Chocó. According to Santiago Ángel Urdinola, president of the Colombian Mining Association, the illegal mining of precious metals limits the operations of formal mining companies.