The World Bank has published its Extractive Industries Annual Review for 2010. Among the Review’s key points were that:
- WB-IFC investments in oil and gas far outstrip that in mining
- Over the past five years, the Bank’s investment in mining has comprised well under 1% of its overall outlay
- Though “new commitments” to the mining sector almost tripled in the past year, they were valued at only US$180 million
- IFC’s commitments to mining, both ongoing and new, are concentrated in Africa
- However, the IFC’s biggest single new commitment was to a gold mine in the Solomons
- Three quarters of this funding is for equity (as distinct from project finance), and increasingly this is in junior exploration companies
- Only one insurance guarantee was provided by the World Bank’s MIGA last year – and it wasn’t in mining.