Ecuador anticipates $4 billion in mining investments by 2021

Outcome is expected regardless of who wins upcoming presidential elections, says minister.

Ecuador is quickly gaining ground as a mining investment destination in Latin America thanks to a revised regulatory framework and a major investor engagement campaign that has already attracted around 420 applications for concessions in less than a year.

Getting to this point, however, has not been easy for a nation that has traditionally based its economy on oil, bananas, cacao and coffee exports, but that it is rather foreign to mining, admits the country’s mining minister Javier Córdova.

Speaking to MINING.com on the sidelines of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference, held in Toronto this week, Córdova says one of the main mistakes Ecuador made in the past was to apply legislation designed for the oil sector to miners, which just didn’t work.

But what really triggered the recent overhaul of the country’s mining regulations was the exit of Canada’s Kinross Gold (TSX:K) (NYSE:KGC) from Ecuador in 2013, after failing to reach an agreement with authorities over the terms for developing its Fruta del Norte project, one of Latin America's biggest undeveloped gold deposits.

Shortly before that, IAMGOLD, another Canadian miner as well as International Minerals had both sold their projects and left the Andean nation.

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