Bolivia: ‘No excuses for killing Mother Earth’ http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/44104

“Multilateral or commercial banks generally give loans for infrastructure, electricity, highways but not for industrialisation. “This has been one of the factors why we have had to seek out strategic partners that can give us the necessary technology and invest capital, and guarantee markets for us.” But, facing trouble with its “strategic partners”, the government has recently indicated that it may be willing to move ahead independently where possible. 

One example is the announcement it will begin mining 50% of the Mutun iron ore deposits. To finance this, the government said it would use revenue from the sale of US$11 million worth of iron ore reserves that Comibol has in storage.Pimentel also said that after five years of steady economic growth, Bolivia’s currency reserves “have reached $9 billion and I think that some of the projects we have in the pipeline could be directly financed from there”. 

Bolivia is also discussing with Venezuela setting up a “grand-national” joint state mining company, within the framework of Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), an anti-imperialist trading bloc launched by Cuba and Venezuela in 2004.“This is a space that we see as much more important, given that sovereign peoples are beginning to negotiate among themselves in order to replace the transnationals.”