Phosphate mining once brought in $100 million a year to Nauru.
But corruption and mismanagement of the resource bankrupted the tiny Pacific country.
Nauru’s Finance Minister Kieran Keke has told Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat program the phosphate industry had collapsed when the current government came to power.
“We spent about 18 months and a considerable amount of effort in assessing whether it was viable to be recommenced,” he said.
“At that time trials showed that there was twenty to thirty years of additional secondary phosphate reserves,” he added.
