• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 04 / 06 / 2011

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Published April 05, 2011. EFE. Havana –  The Cuban government will grant mining permits to individuals for extracting small volumes of construction materials, the deputy minister of Basic Industry said.

Ivan Martinez said that these new kinds of authorizations will soon be approved and will be granted for a maximum of one year.

"Permits will be granted for a period of no longer than one year for mining small volumes and it could be self-employed people who make use of them," Martinez said.

The measure seeks to increase the production of materials like bricks, masonry, sand and gravel, conceivably in line with the Communist government's plans to build public housing on the island.

The economic reforms undertaken by President Raul Castro include planning new ways to deal with Cuba's housing crisis.

Martinez made the statement at the opening of the 6th Cuban Earth Sciences Convention, a meeting lasting until Friday of some 700 international experts in geology, geophysics, mining, oil and gas, and the technologies related to those sectors.

In his talk he also mentioned nickel, one of the island's most important products, and said that "there are resources for more than 50 years" and that new projects are being worked on, including the use of residue from that metal.

Source: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/money/2011/04/05/cuba-allow-small-scale...