Wednesday, November 7 2018 19:14

ArmInfo. More than half of the respondents surveyed believe that Armenia needs to develop the mining sector of the economy when fulfilling certain conditions of  its operation. These are the findings of a survey conducted by the  Gallup public opinion research institute in cooperation with the  Marketing Association of Armenia on the example of the Amulsari  mining project.

According to the study, one of the topics of which was the attitude  of the Armenian public to the implementation of the project for the  operation of the Amulsarsky zalotonosnogo field and the suspension of  mine construction due to protest actions of environmental activists,  28% of respondents said that the field cannot be exploited, 26.5%  thought that the project should be implemented and bring benefits to  local communities, 18.9% considered that the mine should be  exploited, but with active monitoring by the public, and 5.2% - that  the Amulsar deposit should kspluatirovatsya from Armenian, not  foreign companies. Thus, from the point of view of environmental  risks, which, according to the project management, were completely  neutralized through technology and the implementation of a number of  preventive expensive environmental programs, more than 50% of  respondents considered the operation of the Amulsar project to be  quite acceptable provided some of these or other conditions were  observed (technology, control and .d.)

Commenting at the request of ArmInfo, the results of the poll,  project manager Hayk Aloyan noted that they consider them to be fully  justified and correspond to the real picture of the public perception  of the Amulsar project, in which risk management was originally built  into an unquestionable imperative.  "Over the years of project  preparation, we have been confronted with a purposeful, specifically  funded campaign against the implementation of our project. In  Armenia, there is no other business project, so much money would have  been invested in the misinformation and denigration of which, despite  the years of information war against us, the result of the survey shows that the population of the  country, of course, under certain conditions , for example hard  social and state monitoring, not against its implementation. Many  understand that the suspension of the construction of the mine is the  result of unprovoked actions of certain forces that deliberately  disorient the public and manipulate public opinion, "said Hayk  Aloyan. He noted that the public is well aware that the mining  industry is an integral part of the industrial complex of Armenia and  it should function on the availability of modern, neutralizing  possible damage, technologies and continuous public monitoring, that  is, the whole set of measures that, in principle, lay at the very  core of the Amulsar project.

Recall that the Amulsar project is being implemented by Lydian  Armenia, which is a subsidiary of the British Lydian International,  whose shareholders are major international institutional investors  from the United States, Great Britain, and a number of European  countries, including EBRD. The Amulsar project is the largest  industrial project in Armenia today for the development of the  Amulsar gold deposit with a total value of $ 370 million. In August  2016, the project for the construction and development of the deposit  was launched. Preparatory work has been going on since 2006. The life  of the Amulsarsky deposit will be 10 years and 4 months, with an  average of 200 thousand ounces of gold (about 10 million tons of ore)  planned annually. The company is listed on the Toronto Stock  Exchange. Amulsar deposit is the second largest reserves in Armenia.