Sri Lanka is a nation blessed with a range of nature’s priceless gifts. If we take stock of our blessings, we must count on tropical climes with sunlight throughout the year, good rainfall, fecund soils, wildlife, waterfalls, high biodiversity, gemstones, magnificent coastal belt, great seafood, a rainforest cover, and minerals among others.
Mineral Resources
Sri Lanka is a nation blessed with a range of nature’s priceless gifts. If we take stock of our blessings, we must count on tropical climes with sunlight throughout the year, good rainfall, fecund soils, wildlife, waterfalls, high biodiversity, gemstones, magnificent coastal belt, great seafood, a rainforest cover, and minerals among others.
While most of these are glamorised and emphasised on nearly all the media available, Sri Lanka’s mineral riches, apart from its gemstones, are rarely spoken about outside the academic and expert circles.
Although Sri Lanka lags in the manufacture of value-added products using our mineral resources, we mine and export them as commodities mainly to the UK, Eastern, and Western Europe, USA, India, Pakistan and China. It’s no exaggeration to say that we sit on riches that may rival the proverbial treasure of King Solomon.
Industrial minerals in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka possesses an abundance of non-metallic mineral resources. As revealed from mineral investigations conducted by the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, Sri Lanka’s mineral resource base consists primarily of industrial minerals. Of these industrial minerals, heavy minerals (mainly ilmenite, rutile, zircon) are amongst the most abundant minerals with significant economic potential found in Sri Lanka.
