The Ministry of Economy intends to develop the geological program to analyze Romania’s rare minerals, such as substances used for electric cars, otherwise Romania will lose its mineral resources in favor of foreign companies instead of developing factories to process them, says Economy Minister Niculae Bădălău.

“We have 5% economic growth, I want to have 8%, and if we launch mines you’ll see that we will have a boom in this area, (…) We have resources, Romania stands on a mountain of gold, in quotation marks, it’s all about knowing how to exploit it and to keep the added value in Romania, to build these factories in Romania using ores, that’s what it is all about,” said Niculae Bădălău, on the occasion of the presentation of its performance at eight months, according to Agerpres.

The Minister of Economy expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that mining licenses are obtained by foreign companies. “They started to appear (electric cars) here, too. Well, that part of the energy accumulation, the batteries, as we call them improperly, use extremely rare and complicated materials, which Romania does not know whether we have it or not. All explorations are done by foreign firms, the exploitation license will take it all, and we wake up at a certain moment that everyone takes the resource from Romania and that Romania has no factory, having the resource! And there are (countries, e.n.) who do not have the resource, but they have factories like that,” Bădălău said.

He explained that the Ministry of Economy intends to develop a program for the identification of rare mineral resources together with Romanian university geologists and specialists of the Romanian Academy, according to Agerpres.

“With them (Professor of Geology Emil Constantinescu, e.n.) we can do that geological program, and we have had many discussions at the Romanian Academy, because no matter how much we give it or we do not give it importance, in the last years these actions will accelerate and Romania must know what it has. We know about gold, copper, and a few others that have been researched by 1990. After 1990, this subject came to a close,” explained Bădălău.