[Excerpt translation provided by Business and Human Rights Resource Centre]

"Zijin wants to be the first Chinese mining company in Colombia" - July 8, 2020

...With the start of the Buriticá gold mine expected sometime in the second half of 2020, Zijin Mining is close to becoming the first Chinese mining company to operate in Colombia. Part of its interest is due to the fact that China is the country with the highest demand for gold in the world, buying 1,003 tons in 2019... Buriticá, 100 kilometres from Medellín, is one of the few significant gold mines in Colombia, a country where successive governments have tried to promote mining, but whose sector has so far depended almost entirely on three coal projects. Coal royalties represent 88% of Colombia's mining companies, followed by gold with 5.6% and nickel with 5.3%, according to the National Mining Agency... The Chinese state-owned company opened its offices in Bogotá in February 2020, after buying the Buriticá project from Canada's Continental Gold, which in 2016 obtained the environmental license that allows it to begin the exploitation phase...

"In Buriticá the dynamic did not only involve the community and the company. There was this third actor, the informal, and this influenced a lot. The community found benefits of corporate responsibility that were not present in informal mining. However, the mining company still has to recognise the future aspirations of the communities," says María Maya, a researcher on socio-environmental conflicts at the University of Antioquia.