LatinNews Daily - 05 November 2025

*Calibre Mining Nicaragua, a mining company owned by Canadian gold producer, Equinox Gold, has given up a 26,066-hectare (ha) exploitation concession in Bonanza municipality, in Nicaragua’s North Atlantic autonomous region (Raan) which had been authorised in 2022. According to the official gazette, which published the announcement, the company had failed to “find potential interest in the short and medium term”. This is the seventh mining concession that Calibre Mining has given up in a week, with the same reason cited: two concessions, of 49,677ha and 37,864ha, were relinquished on 30 October, followed by another two, of 43,457ha and 47,895ha, on 31 October, and another two on 3 November, spanning 48,623ha and 7,734ha. On 17 June Equinox Gold completed a merger with fellow Canadian company, Calibre Mining, one of the biggest mining companies in Nicaragua, providing it with ownership of Calibre Mining’s two producing mines in Nicaragua, the Libertad and Limón complexes, in Chontales and León departments, respectively. Equinox Gold and the Nicaraguan government have a legal dispute regarding a tax rebate, with independent media such as national newspaper La Prensa reporting that the authoritarian government led by co-presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, was refusing to allow the Canadian company to deduct US$36.6m from its tax bill. The relinquishment of the concessions comes as the Ortega-Murillo government is massively expanding mining cooperation with China, having reportedly granted 30 mining concessions to Chinese companies, totalling almost 600,000 ha in the last two years.

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