The director of the Geological Institute, Dragoman Rabrenović, said tonight that Serbia’s mineral wealth, excluding the new deposit near Žagubica, is worth almost 200 billion dollars.
“All companies engaged in research, when they confirm their reserves, submit that data to the Institute, and it has a real insight into the available situation in that area,” Rabrenović told Insider TV.
He stated that the latest research in the area of Žagubica is awaited, but that according to the first preliminary results, there are two or three deposits there.
“If we were to make a rough estimate, it would be three to four billion dollars for gold alone,” Rabrenović said.
The director of the Geological Institute stated that the mineral rent currently amounts to five percent.
“Let’s roughly calculate on an annual basis that for the production of gold in Bor, the annual rent should be 200 million dollars, 40 percent of which goes to the local self-government, 60 percent to the state,” he said.
Speaking about the ecological consequences of gold mining, Rabrenović said that geological research is generally safe, while mining and exploitation depend on the type of mineral raw material, but that “more than 90 percent of the process is safe.”
