BHOPAL: Rio Tinto, the London-headquartered transnational mining giant, has decided to wash its hand off the Bunder diamond project in the Chhattarpur district of the state due to ‘commercial considerations’. The company announced on Tuesday that it will ‘gift’ all the project assets to the Madhya Pradesh government.
The Bunder deposits were discovered by the company in 2004 and in 2010, it had signed an agreement with the state government for development of the project. In August 2016, it announced that it was no longer interested in the project.
The company had proposed to handover the project to the government more than a year back and since then the proposal was under consideration with the concerned file was making rounds of the mining, revenue and other department. The government, last month, finally decided to accept the ‘gift’.
The assets to be handed over to the Government include land, plant, equipment and vehicles at the project site, besides diamond samples recovered during exploration. “This approach will assist the government to package the assets if it were to proceed with an auction process for the Bunder mineral rights”, a press release of the company said.
Rio Tinto Copper & Diamonds chief executive Arnaud Soirat said “Our exit from Bunder is the latest example of Rio Tinto streamlining its asset portfolio. It simplifies our business, allowing us to focus on our world-class assets”.
“We believe in the value and quality of the Bunder project and support its future development, and the best way to achieve that is to hand over the assets to the Government of Madhya Pradesh”, he said.
