Guyana's Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali has an­nounced plans for the cre­ation of a na­tion­al min­ing con­sor­tium that would al­low min­ers and or­di­nary cit­i­zens to par­tic­i­pate col­lec­tive­ly in large-scale min­ing ven­tures through a lo­cal­ly owned com­pa­ny.

Ali out­lined the pro­pos­al on Fri­day dur­ing the com­mis­sion­ing of a new Cit­i­zens Bank branch in Bar­ti­ca, say­ing the ini­tia­tive forms part of broad­er ef­forts to ex­pand fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion and in­crease pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in key sec­tors of the econ­o­my.

Un­der the pro­posed mod­el, small, medi­um and large-scale min­ers would join with mem­bers of the pub­lic to es­tab­lish a na­tion­al min­ing com­pa­ny ca­pa­ble of com­pet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.