The landslide election of Michel Martelly as president of Haiti last year is already bringing positive results to the impoverished Caribbean nation, Daniel Hachey, president and chief executive of Majescor Resources (MJX-V), believes.
That is welcome news for Haitians struggling in the aftermath of the devastating January 2010 earthquake, ensuing cholera epidemic — which has killed more than 250,000 people — and chronic poverty under the corrupt and brutal dictatorships of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.
“When you look at the political history of Haiti with Papa Doc and Baby Doc and Aristide, it was a difficult place to work for a long time, which is not uncommon in a lot of countries that have had political unrest and problems,” Hachey says. “But with the election of Martelly a lot of things have changed, and things are moving forward rapidly from a business perspective and a mining perspective . . . we’ve heard that there have been a lot of people asking for information about mining in the country.”
The former investment banker points to several positive signs of development, including a deep-water port and industrial park that are being built at the Caracol fishing village on Haiti’s northern coast, and a new university 15 km from Majescor’s Somine copper-gold property, where the junior explorer has two drills turning and plans to deliver its first resource estimate before year-end.
“Martelly is pro-business and pro-mining,” Hachey continues, adding that the government sent representatives to the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s recent convention in Toronto.
“They realized it’s competitive and companies compete for mining investment dollars to attract both majors and juniors,” Hachey says. “It’s like anything else — it’s a competitive world, and if you want people to come in and spend a lot of money in your country, the more favourable you make the environment from both a financial and a work perspective, the easier it is to attract capital.”
Majescor’s property in northeastern Haiti is made up of the Blondin and Douvray copper-gold porphyry prospects, its Faille-B quartz gold vein prospect and a number of geochemical and geophysical targets and surface gold-base metal showings that have yet to be drill tested.
Blondin is 2 km northwest of Douvray and Faille is 4 km southeast of Douvray.
Somine lies within a prospective volcanic arc environment hosting a number of epithermal gold and porphyry copper occurrences in Haiti, as well as the Pueblo Viejo gold deposit in the adjacent Dominican Republic owned by Barrick Gold (ABX-T, ABX-N) and Goldcorp (G-T, GG-N).
“There is a whole mineralized trend that runs right across Hispaniola Island,” Hachey says. “There are many companies working in the Dominican on this trend, and there are only us and Newmont Mining in Haiti. The whole belt seems to be quite richly mineralized, and it stretches from one end of the island to the other.”
Majescor’s Douvray, Blondin and Faille B prospects, 35 km southeast of the town of Cap Haïtien and 20 km southwest of the port city of Fort Liberté, have been known since the 1970s and 1980s, when the area was examined by foreign bilateral and multilateral agencies, including the United Nations Development Program.
Recently the company reported assay results from the first drill hole at the Blondin prospect.
On March 13 Majescor reported that hole 1, drilled 2 km northwest of the Douvray prospect, returned an intercept in the oxide zone of 72.4 grams silver and 0.05% copper over 15 metres and 0.43% copper, 0.02 gram gold per tonne and 16.9 grams silver per tonne over 113 metres in the sulphide zone, including 4.44% copper and 6.2 grams silver over 2 metres and 0.44% copper and 1.7 grams silver over 8 metres.
The company reported that in addition to those results, both oxide and sulphide zones in hole 1 host multiple anomalous tungsten assays at greater than 0.01%. Majescor says it will recheck the anomalous tungsten analyses for their values using a separate analytical technique. The company also notes that tungsten is also present in the super-gene oxide zone at the Douvray prospect, and that assays will be re-checked there as well.
Hachey says the first significant copper intercept in the sulphide zone at Blondin, along with a new silver-enriched oxide cap, are encouraging and complement good results coming from Douvray.
Drilling results at the Douvray porphyry copper prospect released late last year and earlier this year highlight 26.7 grams silver and 0.14% copper over 11 metres in the super-gene oxide zone; 0.50% copper, 1.47 grams silver and 0.06 gram gold over 231 metres in the underlying primary sulphide zone in hole 1; 255 grams silver, 0.35% copper and 0.02 gram gold over 14 metres in the super-gene oxide zone; and 0.78% copper, 0.10 gram gold and 2.82 grams silver over 295 metres in the underlying primary sulphide zone in hole 2.
Hole 004 cut 277 grams silver, 0.18% copper and 0.04 gram gold over 14 metres in the super-gene oxide zone and 0.60% copper, 0.08 gram gold and 0.88 gram silver over 213 metres in the primary sulphide zone at hole 5.
Majescor owns 72% of the Somine project with the remainder held by a number of individuals, the majority of whom are Haitians. Majescor has completed a base camp at the project and employs 50 Haitians as geologists, technicians and support staff, and another 50 to 100 Haitians as day labourers for drill moves and drill pad set-ups.
At presstime Majescor traded at 21¢ per share within a 52-week range of 10¢–36¢. The Montreal-based explorer has 71.7 million shares, fully diluted.
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