A joint venture between Canada’s First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) and the Panamanian government may offer a swift and practical solution to the dispute that has kept the Cobre Panama copper mine shut since November 2023, analysts suggest.
Ana Juarez, CTA Environmental Consultant president, said Panamanians are only now beginning to grasp both the economic fallout of the suspension and the benefits the project had brought — benefits, she said, that were not fully recognized at the time.
Cobre Panama, Central America’s largest open-pit copper mine, produced 330,863 tonnes of copper in 2023 before the government ordered to shut it down. It would’ve become a 100 million tonnes a year operation in 2024, placing it near the top of the world’s copper throughput ranking.
Speaking to BNamericas, Juarez pointed to international examples of successful government-industry partnership, such as…
