New Areas In Mining Sector To Be Targeted

Minister of Transport and Mining, Hon. Audley Shaw, says he will be aggressively targeting new areas of potential opportunity within the mining sector.

In an interview with JIS News, Minister Shaw indicated that Jamaica, which has been mining bauxite for 70 years, must rise to the challenge of seizing the other opportunities that exist within the sector, in the face of declining bauxite reserves.

“The average estimate of the remaining productive and potentially profitable bauxite levels is about another 25 years of mining,” he said.

Mr. Shaw is also expressing confidence in Jamaica’s ability to capitalise on its rich limestone reserves.

Highlighting the country’s comparative advantage in the area of limestone production, Minister Shaw argued that “one of the gifts that we have got from God is that we have an overwhelming quantity of limestone in Jamaica”.

He further noted that estimates suggest that Jamaica has as many as 150 billion tonnes of limestone and pointed to the potential for mining limestone in the medium to long term.

“It is estimated that we will probably mine 50 billion tonnes over the next several hundreds of years, so while bauxite will be in decline to some extent, limestone is going to pick up,” he added.

Mr. Shaw said that there is a wide range of quality in Jamaican limestone, and that limestone of the highest quality can be used to produce tablets for medicinal use, among other things, with the right infusion of technology.

He also cited the important use of limestone within the building industry, not just in Jamaica but for the entire Caribbean, while noting that “with the exception of Guyana, Jamaica has the largest limestone reserves in the entire Caribbean region”.

Mr. Shaw said that as the new Minister of Transport and Mining, he is very focused on ensuring that all mining activity is done with the necessary approvals from the National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), “so that whatever work we are doing, in terms of mining, has proper environmental management and supervision”.