ArmInfo. There is real progress lin the issue of resuming the work of the Teghout field. On March 28, answering the question of the RA National Assembly MP from the Prosperous Armenia faction Artur Grigoryan (in the recent past, he headed the Ministry of Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources of the RA - ed. note), said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. According to him, the company's management (Vallex Group, which develops the field - ed. note) is already returning people to jobs. Nikol Pashinyan expressed hope that within the next 1-1.5 months the enterprise will resume work.
"I was informed that all administrative issues were practically resolved on this project," the head of government noted.
To recall, in late January, in an interview with journalists, Minister of Economic Development and Investments of the Republic of Armenia Tigran Khachatryan expressed his optimism about the possibility of restarting the Teghout deposit. According to him, organizational issues with the bank (VTB Group - Ed. note) will be settled in the manner prescribed by law. "The question is - is there any hope to restart Teghout? Yes, there is hope. I think nothing prevents to restart the mine - after all the issues with the bank are settled," the minister said. Answering the question of how much damage is estimated for the country's economy from the mine's downtime, Tigran Khachatryan said that in 2017 Teghout exported products of approximately $ 120 million. The negative effect for the Armenian economy in 2018 was exactly this amount.
The program for the exploitation of the Teghout copper-molybdenum mine was approved by the Armenian government in November 2007. In terms of reserves, the Teghout deposit is the second in the republic after the Kajaran copper and molybdenum deposits in Syunik. Back in 1972, large-scale geological exploration was carried out, which resulted in confirmed reserves of 450 million tons of ore with a content of 1.6 million tons of copper and 99 thousand tons of molybdenum. The project due to environmental problems was suspended in February 2018 .
The operation of the field can be continued only after solving a number of technical and environmental problems, due to which the company, in fact, lost its credit support. On November 21, 2018, Minister of Energy Infrastructures and Natural Resources of Armenia Garegin Baghramyan informed journalists that VTB Bank is picking up a new operator of the Teghout project.
To note, Vallex Group was established in 1998 and unites 20 subsidiary and affiliated companies. Among them, Teghout CJSC, founded in May 2006, 100% of the shares of CJSC belong to Teghut Investments Limited of Cyprus, 100% of whose voting shares in turn belong to Armenian Copper Programme CJSC, which is fully owned by Valery Mejlumyan, and BaseMetals, which operates a copper-gold deposit in the village of Drmbon, Martakert region, NKR, Armenian Copper Program CJSC (ACP), which operates the Alaverdi copper smelter that produces blister copper.