this is why you don't deal with romanians

Romania is not selling biggest copper mine

ROMANIA has backed out of a deal to sell its biggest copper mine to Canada's Roman Copper Corp, its economy minister said on Saturday, a fresh blow to a privatization plan agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

Roman Copper won a tender for the Cupru Min Abrud mine for 200.8 million euros (US$262.31 million) last month, outbidding Australia's OZ Minerals Ltd, Dutch Dundee Holding and Bulgaria's Ellatzite Med Ad.

But Economy Minister Lucian Bode said the two sides, after 10 days of talks, could not agree on the terms of the deal, part of a privatization plan agreed with international lenders and designed to raise nearly US$2 billion this year.

"The state did not want to give up three conditions," Bode was quoted as saying by state news agency Agerpres. "We will relaunch the tender but we will keep the same conditions."

Under those conditions, all privatization contracts had to be made public, payment had to be settled within 30 days and the company had to set up a collateral deposit of 32.27 million euros as a guarantee for future environment investment, Bode said.

"We were surprised that the negotiating committee refused to accept our written signature," said Mike Curtis, partner at Bay Front Capital Partners, the Toronto-based merchant bank that owns Roman Copper.

Failure to sell Cupru Min - with likely reserves of 900,000 metric tons of copper, or 60 percent of the country's overall estimated reserves - does not help cut state participation in its firms.