The last of 17 foreign mining enterprises that had expressed interest in participating in the privatization ("capitalization") of the state-owned La Rosario Dominicana mining firm has left the DR, tired of waiting for a government decision on how best to privatize the firm. The firm, Genel, announced its departure this week after investing some US$14 million in exploration and research. The government was not happy with the first offers for shareholdings in the firm, and has contemplated changing the terms of the privatization in order to attract better offers and suitors. One of the ideas floated would be to allow private sector participation to go up to 80% of La Rosario’s capital, something rarely done in the DR (by law, the government stake in privatized firms is not to go under 50%, except in very limited circumstances). The government has spent months debating La Rosario’s fate internally without coming to a decision. Yesterday the Executive Director of the Association of Foreign-Owned Companies (ASIEX), Pablo Linares, noted the departure of Genel and called on the government to get moving on the La Rosario case, preferably by agreeing to up the potential private sector stake to 80%. Without doing so, he argued, few firms will be interested in investing the large amounts of capital, equipment and technology estimated as necessary to make La Rosario competitive.
