On Friday more than 200 troops occupied the 12,000 tpy Vinto tin smelter in Bolivia. The soldiers entered the facility after Bolivian President Juan Evo Morales Ayma arrived to sign a decree nationalizing the plant, the country’s largest operating smelter. The plant had been owned by Glencore subsidiary Sinchi Wayra SA.
Some workers opposed to the nationalization had chained the smelter’s main entrance shut, but the troops cut through the chains to allow the signing ceremony to take place.
"The Vinto Metallurgical Complex returns to the control of the Bolivian state with all its current shares, allowing the Vinto Metallurgical Company to assume immediate administrative, technical, legal and financial control," the decree signed by Mr Morales said.
The occupation/nationalisation came at the end of a week in which more than 20,000 co-operative miners had demonstrated against planned tax increases. The government agreed to exempt the co-operatives from the tax rises and also offered to grant US$ 10 million in funds to the country’s 536 mining cooperatives, which represent some 55,000 independent miners. In addition, the cooperatives will now have two out of six seats on the board of directors of the state mining company Comibol.
The deal with the co-operatives also included promises to “improve and centralise the commercialisation of metals” and to study the cost of the electric power used by the independent miners. In return the independent miners have again given their support – withdrawn last October after a violent dispute around the Comibol and co-operative mine workings at Huanuni – to President Morales’ and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) party.
