Baku, Azerbaijan, July 21
Trend:
The mineral and raw materials potential of Uzbekistan's mineral deposits is estimated at $5.7 trillion, Podrobno.uz reported referring to the First Deputy Chairman of the State Committee of Uzbekistan on Geology and Mineral Resources Azam Kadirkhodjaev.
He said just over $1 trillion of them is the cost of the already explored reserves and the prepared deposits. At the same time, only 20 percent of the territory of Uzbekistan has been studied, and accordingly, there is a huge potential for discovering new deposits.
"Uzbekistan is among the top ten world leaders in terms of reserves and resources of the most important types of minerals, such as gold, uranium, copper, potassium salts, phosphates and kaolin. The country occupies one of the leading positions in the production of gold and uranium. The number of licenses issued to subsoil users has also increased accordingly, taking into account these significant reserves of mineral resources, and availability of the appropriate regulatory framework that meets the modern requirements of doing business, and those subsoil users make a significant contribution to the development of Uzbekistan by establishing their production enterprises. As a result, the State Committee on Geology and Mineral Resources issued over 1,200 licenses for the right to use subsoil plots in recent years," Kadirkhodjaev said.
The interest in geological exploration activities in Uzbekistan has been shown by Russian, Turkish, Chinese, South Korean, Azerbaijani and British companies in recent years.
For example, the Turkish side will conduct geological exploration work in two regions of Uzbekistan, in the Khurob, Aydim-Jetimtau promising areas and Sarytau ore field, where gold and rare earth metals will be searched for.
The Russian "Rosgeoperspektiva" company will be engaged in geological exploration work for search of copper and gold in the promising areas of Kazakhtau and Kazakhtau 1 in Navoi region of Uzbekistan, and Korean investors will be engaged in the development of the four deposits of gold and tungsten.