Private sector will invest $20 million in the extraction and processing of chromite mineral in Afghanistan, officials said Saturday.
The country’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum has signed amended contracts with five private companies to allow the investment.
The extraction will take place in Kabul, Logar, Parwan and Maidan Wardak provinces.
The process of assessing of the deposits will take one month, following which extraction would begin.
In bid to encourage investors, the ministry has reduced royalty from 30 percent to 7.5 percent.
The companies are required to process the extracted chromite within Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is estimated to have $1 trillion mineral resources.
However, poor security, rampant corruption and a lack of roads, power and other infrastructure, have hampered development of Afghanistan’s mining sector
Nargis Nehan, acting minister of mines, said that terrorists and local strongmen were illegally extracting mines mostly in Khost and Paktia provinces.
She said that the ministry would sent its technical team to assess Lapis Lazuli mine in Kuran wa Munjan district of northeast Badakhshan province.
