NUUK, Denmark – As Greenland’s rare earths and minerals are sized up, the head of the Arctic territory’s main business group has warned against deals simply shipping its resources and profits overseas.
Christian Keldsen, head of the Greenland Business Association, told AFP that the government must avoid saying that Greenland is “open for business” when in reality, long and difficult negotiations lie ahead.
Some other countries may become frustrated, Keldsen said, calling for balanced development in the autonomous Danish island in the global spotlight since US President Donald Trump returned to power.
Trump, who said Greenland should come under US control for security reasons, alarmed Denmark and other European nations by at one point refusing to rule out the use of force. As its ice covering melts, Greenland’s mineral resources are increasingly coveted.
Greenland has long survived on subsidies from the Danish government that account for about 20 percent of its economy. It knows it needs massive investment to survive on its own.
“The risk obviously is that if you open the floodgates too much, you’re going to get companies in and they’re going to take everything out and all the revenue goes out of the country as well,” said Keldsen, whose office is in a wooden house in the capital Nuuk.
“So finding the right balance of creating local value and wealth and at the same time being attractive to investors and to the projects — that’s what we need to be finding.”
Fishing, mainly cod, is Greenland’s main industry, and the key Royal Greenland fishing company is a semi-state enterprise.
The island’s telecoms and electricity companies are also state-owned, given the difficulties in providing services to the many isolated corners of the territory of just 57,000 people.
Greenland wants to develop tourism and its mining sector — but not for nothing.
In November, the parliament passed a law restricting the purchase of property and land use rights of foreign entities.
