[we0MA4MI]

Regardless of what the gold price is everyone in Cotui (well those of us who care) are just astonished at the "renegotiation" of the contract that just took place, by which the Dominican government basically just gave up any income they were supposed to receive from this gold mining enterprise for at least six years. An amendment was introduced to congress (don'k know by whom) and it was passed without any resistance from anyone except the deputy and senator from Cotui.

Listen to this...Barrick will give The DR any money only after they have recouped all of their investments (estimated at about 2700 million USD) and only after they are making at least 10% net profit. So in reality the government could in effect get Zero, nothing, zippo from this if Barrick turns out to not have at least a 10% net profit once they've recouped all of their investments. This is ridiculous beyond belief...

Imagine you own a huge pile of gold only it's buried and needs extracting. You may not have the equipment to extract it yourself, but I'm pretty sure nobody is going to say "Mr. extractor all of this gold is now yours and you can pay me something once you get every penny you spent to buy the equipment, train people, etc and then and only then you can give me some money if you so desire...". This makes me so angry because in this negotiation WE should have the power. WE are the ones with the nonrenewable resource (gold). We probably could have hired Barrick to extract this gold for us instead of just giving to them...