Angola’s Minister of Mineral Resources, Oil, and Gas, Diamantino Azevedo, revealed on Thursday (12) that he expects to see multinational BHP return to invest in the country, pointing out that reforms in the sector are fostering interest among foreign investors.
According to the financial news agency Bloomberg, Diamantino Azevedo said that the BHP Group—Australia’s largest mining company and one of the largest in the world—has shown “strong interest” in returning to invest in the country, almost 20 years after abandoning operations.
At a reception organized by Australian investors on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town, South Africa, where Angola presented itself as a destination for long-term mineral investments, the government listed the reforms made by the country, which serve to provide “greater regulatory certainty, transparency, and alignment with international governance standards.”
The multinational’s return would represent an important turning point, he added, joining Australian mining companies such as Rio Tinto and Tyranna Resources, which already operate in Angola due to investor confidence in the country’s potential and its recent reforms.
At the end of 2008, BHP withdrew from its joint venture with Petra Diamonds in Alto Cuilo shortly after a helicopter crash killed five people, including David Hopgood, its country operations director.
