April 20 (Reuters) – Chile’s government is aiming to speed up mining permit approvals to help unlock an investment pipeline worth more than $100 billion, Economy and Mining Minister Daniel Mas said in an interview published on Monday, as the world’s top copper producer seeks to regain momentum in the key sector.
• “We are working with a sense of urgency to guarantee legal certainty, clear rules, reduce processing times and eliminate bottlenecks,” Mas said in the interview with Chilean newspaper La Tercera.
• Mas said implementation of Chile’s sectoral permitting framework would simplify about 200 procedures and cut permit processing times by 30% without lowering environmental standards.
• He added that the government was also preparing further legal proposals and management changes beyond the law’s implementation to reduce regulatory burdens in critical areas.
• Mining projects worth more than $17 billion had entered environmental review in recent weeks, which Mas described as an early sign that investor expectations were improving under the new government.
• Chile is also prioritizing measures to encourage mineral exploration, speed up continuity and expansion projects and promote the reprocessing of tailings and secondary minerals, Mas said.
(Reporting by Kylie Madry, Editing by Daina Beth Solomon)
