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El Salvador is literally sitting on a goldmine that might increase the value of the nation, but instead of unearthing this hidden gem in the hopes of resolving financial difficulties, no one is permitted to handle the loot. The controversial president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, who once made Bitcoin official tender, now seeks to maximize the country’s natural resources.
For comparison, $3 trillion is equivalent to 8,800% of El Salvador’s current gross domestic product.
When El Salvador became the first nation in the world to outlaw metal mining in 2017, it made headlines. After putting the wheels in motion, neighboring nations including Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama quickly enacted their own mining limitations because of the nation’s concerns about the ecological impacts and environmental impact of mining. In a stunning reversal, President Nayib Bukele is thinking of raising it to reveal the hidden treasure. This was done under President Salvador Sanchez Ceren. Money speaks at the end of the day.
Bukele claims in a post on X that El Salvador may have “the largest gold deposits per square kilometer in the world.”
According to him, El Salvador could make $131 billion, or 380% of its present GDP, even if only 4% of its gold reserves were mined.
The words “God placed a giant treasure under our feet” were written by a vocal ukele player.
Claiming even a portion of this wealth might be “transformative” for El Salvador, where 27% of the population is considered to be living in poverty.
But according to France 24, Bukele’s 4% statistic appears to be based on a study that was authored by unidentified authors and that he declined to publish.
According to Bukele: “El Salvador potentially has three trillion dollars, make no mistake it’s not billions, it’s trillions, three million million dollars in gold alone.”
“We’ve also found gallium, tantalum, tin, and many other materials needed for the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions,” he added, highlighting additional valuable metals that could be worth even more.
DIOS COLOCÓ UN GIGANTESCO TESORO BAJO NUESTROS PIES:
El Salvador tiene potencialmente los depósitos de oro con mayor densidad por km² en el mundo.
Ubicado en el Anillo de Fuego del Pacífico, una de las zonas más ricas en recursos minerales gracias a su actividad volcánica…🧵 pic.twitter.com/8lD3xCUlKU
— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) November 27, 2024
“The gold is only… the potential gold is only one part of it, and it isn’t even the most valuable.”
He expressed confidence that El Salvador can “invest in recovering our rivers, our lakes, our forests and reforesting” as long as it is mined carefully and can emulate Norway’s prudent management of its natural resources.
While Archbishop José Luis Escobar Alas urged El Salvador to maintain its mining moratorium, not everyone is persuaded that El Salvador can mine responsibly. Alas responded, “It’s not true that there’s green mining, it’s paid for with lives, kidney, respiratory problems, and leukemia that aren’t immediate,” after Bukele referred to the prohibition as “absurd.”
A plan to lift the mining restriction isn’t likely to encounter much opposition, though, as Bukele’s party controls the nation’s Congress by a “wide margin.”
It appears like Bukele is placing all of his hopes on the gold that is just out of his grasp after the majority of Salvadorans have rejected Bitcoin and its adoption has derailed El Salvador’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund on a $1.3 billion loan.
