Peru, Colombia to jointly combat illegal mining

The governments of Peru and Colombia, which share a 1,626km frontier, signed an agreement aimed at eliminating illegal mining operations on their common jungle border.

Ollanta Humala and Juan Manuel Santos, presidents of Peru and Colombia, respectively, brought their full ministerial cabinets to the northeastern Peruvian jungle city of Iquitos to sign an 11-point accord.

The agreement seeks to promote legal copper, gold and silver mining operations in the Putumayo river valley and the sharing of regulatory experiences and knowledge surrounding mining specialist training.

The two countries, which form part of the four-nation Pacific Alliance trading bloc with Chile and Mexico and have formed a joint stock exchange, also plan to pool efforts to fight money laundering, terrorism, drug trafficking and the white slave trade while focusing on spurring development in the impoverished jungle region, Humala said.

"We have to clean up the Putumayo, not just in terms of illegal mining and drug trafficking but also underdevelopment," Humala told reporters in a broadcast by Lima-based TV Peru.

Peru's interior minister Daniel Urresti, who formerly headed the office for mining formalization, said armed forces from both countries would conduct joint operations to destroy 25-30 illegal gold dredges along the Putumayo. Peruvian illegal miners can currently dodge the Peruvian navy by crossing the river and hoisting the Colombian flag, Urresti said.

"Now with these protocols that we're going to implement jointly, they're not going to be able to do that anymore," he said. "We hope to be able to destroy all the dredges on the Putumayo."

Since taking office in July 2011, Humala has set out to halt illegal mining operations which have spread to at least 10 of Peru's 25 regions and register small-scale mining concessions located outside protected jungle areas.

Humala is setting up military bases and units to control the flow of fuel, chemicals and machinery to illegal mining operations in the Amazon jungle, curb exports of illegally-produced gold and destroy unauthorized river dredges and gold mills.

Informal and illegal miners, which accounted for about 12% of Peru's 161t of gold output in 2012, generate about US$3bn in annual revenue, according to the energy and mines ministry (MEM). Tax collection office Sunat has seized 2t gold of illegal gold shipments to date.

Illegal mining accounts for more than half of Colombia's operations. In a 2010-2011 census on mining activity, Minminas registered 14,357 mining production units in Colombia of which 63%, or over 9,000, did not have mining titles. The defense ministry this year created a unit to crack down on illegal mining, Unimic, after an accident at an illegal gold mine in southern Colombia left at least 12 dead.

Illegal gold mining has spread in Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia as gold prices jumped sevenfold over a decade to US$1,900/oz by 2011, according to Thomas Hentschel, director of Swiss government program Better Gold Initiative.

"When we work together, there are better results," Santos said. "There is nothing more true in the history of global development than when countries unite to work together for common goals, this makes it a reality."