Early Warning System

Countries

Honduras

Geographic location where the impacts of the investment may be experienced.

Specific Location

Las Vegas Municipality, Santa Barbara Department

Whenever identified, the area within countries where the impacts of the investment may be experienced. Exact locations of projects may not be identified fully or at all in project documents. Please review updated project documents and community-led assessments.

Financial Institutions

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)

International, regional and national development finance institutions. Many of these banks have a public interest mission, such as poverty reduction.

Project Status

Proposed

Stage of the project cycle. Stages vary by development bank and can include: pending, approval, implementation, and closed or completed.

Bank Risk Rating

Environmental and social categorization assessed by the development bank as a measure of the planned project’s environmental and social impacts. A higher risk rating may require more due diligence to limit or avoid harm to people and the environment. For example, "A" or "B" are risk categories where "A" represents the highest amount of risk. Results will include projects that specifically recorded a rating, all other projects are marked ‘U’ for "Undisclosed."

Borrower

American Pacific Honduras S.A.

A public entity (government or state-owned) provided with funds or financial support to manage and/or implement a project.

Sectors

Mining

The service or industry focus of the investment. A project can have several sectors.

Investment Amount (USD)

Not Disclosed

Value listed on project documents at time of disclosure. If necessary, this amount is converted to USD ($) on the date of disclosure. Please review updated project documents for more information.

Bank Documents

Primary Source

Original disclosure @ DFC website

Updated in EWS Jun 24, 2022

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Project Description

If provided by the financial institution, the Early Warning System Team writes a short summary describing the purported development objective of the project and project components. Review the complete project documentation for a detailed description.

The Project involves the optimization and expansion of the El Mochito mine, a 70-year old lead, zinc and silver concentrate mine located near the Municipality of Las Vegas, approximately 88 km southwest of the City of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Central America. The mining concession for El Mochito encompasses 11,000 hectares in the La Soledad watershed east of the Santa Barbara National Park. The active mine footprint is 200 hectares (approximately 1.8% of the concession). The main infrastructure consists of a shaft-accessed underground mine and a processing plant that produces separate zinc and lead concentrates. Silver, a by-product of the lead and zinc concentrate is sold as percent silver concentrate and not standalone refined silver. Mineralized material is mined by trackless and conventional underground mining methods, transported, partially crushed underground and then hoisted to the surface by a vertical shaft. Over the years, three tailings facilities have been used, two of which have been retired. The remaining active tailings facility has sufficient storage capacity for several future years. Concentrates are trucked daily to Puerto Cortés located 35 km north of San Pedro Sula on the Gulf of Honduras and shipped by ocean freighters once sufficient material has been stockpiled at the port. The Project involves the following elements: 1) installing a new, underground 442-meter rock only hoisting shaft which will shorted the average underground truck hauling distances by fifty percent, increase hoisting capacity, ventilation, services access and mining capacities; 2) upgrading the underground pumping and water management system that reduces costs by reducing the number of pumps, rationalizing pumping columns, and installing an effective water clarification system which will lead to better pump efficiency; and 3) upgrading the crushing circuit, processing plant, and tailings

Investment Description

Here you can find a list of individual development financial institutions that finance the project.

US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)

None of the investment information was available at the moment of the snapshot.

Contact Information

This section aims to support the local communities and local CSO to get to know which stakeholders are involved in a project with their roles and responsibilities. If available, there may be a complaint office for the respective bank which operates independently to receive and determine violations in policy and practice. Independent Accountability Mechanisms receive and respond to complaints. Most Independent Accountability Mechanisms offer two functions for addressing complaints: dispute resolution and compliance review.

ACCESS TO INFORMATION

Unlike many other development finance institutions, DFC does not currently have an access to information policy.

Under the United States Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), DFC is obliged to respond to reasonably formulated requests for Agency records. However, DFC may apply exemptions from release to certain types of information and may charge fees in responding to requests. DFC has a designated FOIA officer who is trained in how to respond to requests and implement the law. You can learn more about filing a FOIA request at: https://www.dfc.gov/foia.

ACCOUNTABILITY MECHANISM OF THE UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT FINANCE CORPORATION (DFC)

The Office of Accountability is an independent office that addresses complaints about environmental or social issues related to DFC-supported projects. The office provides communities an opportunity to have concerns independently reviewed and addressed. If you submit a complaint to the Office of Accountability, it may assist you by either seeking to address your problems by facilitating a problem solving dialogue between you and those implementing the project and/or investigating whether the DFC complied with its policies to prevent environmental, social, human rights, and labor harms.

You can find more information about the Office of Accountability at: https://www.dfc.gov/who-we-are/office-accountability.