Interesting folks – the LNP can’t find time to come downstairs at Parliament House to hear Naoto Kan but can pull out all the stops to revisit old mistakes in New Delhi. Australias Queensland state seeks investment from Indian firms in uranium mining Anilesh S Mahajan Last Updated: August 29, 2014 | 20:53 IST A week before Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott lands in New Delhi on his first trip to India, the Australian state of Queensland is soliciting investments from Indian companies to mine uranium. The buzz among newsmen down under is that Abbott may sign a nuclear supplies agreement on this visit and it is on top of the agenda list. Abbott is scheduled to meet Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi again in November at the G20 Summit in Brisbane. Indian government officials say that most of the negotiations on the Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement with Australia have been completed and they expect the agreement any time soon. At a select media briefing, the states trade and investment commissioner for South Asia, Parag Shirname, said that there are two-three Indian corporate houses that are keenly looking at getting the mining license, once the deal is reached. We have already briefed them about the regulatory frameworks, geological data and the attorney firms. They are exploring the opportunity, he said. Shirname refused to divulge the names of these corporate houses citing non-disclosure agreements. The state has proven reserves of 165.95 million tonnes of raw uranium, which is most significant in Australia . With Indian investments, the government there is expecting production to go up about 30 per cent by 2017, from 6,976 tonne in 2011. The Queensland government restarted the process of giving out mining licenses from July this year, after a moratorium of 25 years. India has already concluded civil nuclear cooperation agreements with Argentina and Kazakhstan, and a similar contract with Canada is in final stages. In fact, in a conversation with BT in June, the Canadian Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford said that the Canadian uranium industry is looking forward to further negotiations for the supply of Canadian uranium to India in the near future. Moreover, officials in the Canadian government had told BT in June that two corporate houses were in touch with them to take clearances and invest in mining companies. As per Canadian law, Indian companies can take only 49 per cent of equity in a uranium mining company. There are no such conditions if they come to Australia, Shirname said. India has been in negotiations with Australia since 2012, after Australia reversed its adverse stand on India signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Australia holds about a third of the worlds recoverable uranium resources, after Kazakhstan and Canada. It is one of the poll promises of Narendra Modis party BJP to revive the Indian nuclear programme, which was halted after a pact with the US. Modi, on his visit to Japan , is expected to sign a nuclear deal with Japan, which will not only smoothen the investment of Japanese companies in setting up of nuclear plants, but will also help the US treaty to be enforced as most US nuclear equipment companies either have Japanese investments or they work in conjunction. --
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 02:05:37 +0000
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