Frontier Mining hopes to get a decision from the Kazakhstan government regarding its approval for the Coville Intercorp deal in the next few months, Proactive Investors UK reported.
It initially agreed to buy-out its joint venture partner - to get full control of the Benkala copper project and to acquire Coville's wholly-owned Maminskaya gold project - in early 2010. Since then it has been waiting for the Kazakhstan authorities to approve the deal.
The government has a pre-emptive right to buy the 50 percent stake in Benkala, and Frontier is essentially waiting to find out what the government intends to do.
However the matter has been complicated somewhat by a restructuring of the government's internal departments and procedures.
Basically Frontier's application was submitted in July, it was quickly reviewed by all the relevant government departments and then it was referred to an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) for consideration - which convened for the first time in December 2010.
In January the application has subsequently been referred to Kazakhstan's state owned mining firm Tauken-Samruk for review.
Frontier said it understands that Tauken-Samruck's investment committee will review and make a decision on the application at the next available committee.
Tauken-Samruk's decision will be announced to the market, Frontier said. The decision will then be presented at the government's next IMC, where it will make a ruling on the application.
Frontier said it cannot say when the next IMC will take place but it is hopeful that there will be a meeting in March or April 2011, during which its application will be presented and there should be no more than two to three weeks between the IMC ruling and the Ministry's statement.