El Salvador president proposes bill to overturn metals mining ban

Reuters | December 22, 2024 |

El Salvador president Nayib Bukele. Credit: Casa Presidencial, Wikimedia Commons

El Salvador’s Congress will begin debating a bill on Saturday from President Nayib Bukele that would overturn a 2017 national ban on metals mining, the head of the president’s bloc in Congress said on Friday.


The bill is an “initiative of the president of the republic, through the minister of economy, to approve the general law on metal mining,” lawmaker Christian Guevara announced on the floor of El Salvador’s unicameral legislative assembly, where Bukele’s allies make up 57 of 60 total seats.

In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to ban forms of metals mining. Bukele, who took office in 2019, has called the ban absurd and supports gold mining.

(By Nelson Renteria and Brendan O’Boyle; Editing by Stephen Coates)