Afghanistan- MoMP inks 9 marble extraction agreements worth $23m

(MENAFN- Afghanistan Times) AT News Report

KABUL: The Ministry of Mines and
Petroleum (MoMP) on Monday inked nine multimillion dollars' worthagreements of
marble mining in western Herat province, incorporating amendments at the
request of contractors.

'These amendments have been brought in
line with international standards in order to avoid legal issues in the
future,' said Nargis Nihan, the Acting Minister of MoMP during the contract-signing
ceremony here.

'These nine contracts encompass 147 small
and medium mining projects, in which work on some of them had stopped due to
legal and technical issues and the contractors had demanded amendments two
years ago.'

According to her, the contractors of
those projects couldn't carry on their work according to the initial agreements
due to legal issues, and thus the amendments were incorporated in the
agreements.

The contracted Afghan companies had
paused the marble extractions since the National Unity Government (NUG) came
into power. The value of these projects is considered to$23 million.

'We are striving to sign more mining
and extraction contracts this year. We will soon witness more achievements in
terms of mines and soon we will sign another five contracts of marble and
talcum mines,' said NargisNihan.

Meanwhile, the officials in the Marble
Extraction and Process Council in the western region said that they had
invested dozens of million dollars in marble extraction and processing.

They added that they had been facing
many challenges due to lack of raw materials over the last five years but their
problems would be resolved as the amended contracts were signed.

'The new contracts are very important
to us. We can broaden our activities through the extraction of marble mines. We
are grateful to the government,' said Wahidullah, a member of the Marble
Extraction and Process Council.

'The government should help us in terms
of extraction,so we do not lose our foreign customers,' said Ghulam Mohammad
Eisa, another member of the Marble Extraction and Process Council.

This comes as the economic experts
believe that the government should encourage and help the private sector in the
sphere of extraction and processing of mines in order to help stimulate the
Afghan economy.

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