According to Bukele, El Salvador may be sitting on unmined gold reserves worth an estimated $3 trillion, approximately 8,800% of the nation’s current GDP.

In a series of posts on social media platform X, Bukele projected that the country potentially has “the largest gold deposits per square kilometer in the world.”.

GOD PLACED A GIGANTIC TREASURE UNDER OUR FEET: El Salvador potentially has the highest density gold deposits per km² in the world. Located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the richest areas in mineral resources thanks to its volcanic activity.

But it isn’t just gold that is important. Studies have identified the presence of a wide range of critical metals and rare earth minerals: Cobalt, lithium, nickel, platinum, iridium, titanium, and germanium. //

The president claims that ‘responsible mining’ can be done, but there is no evidence to support this claim,” Pedro Cabezas, a member of the Central American Alliance against Mining (ACAFREMIN), told Newsweek. “There are no examples of ‘responsible mining’ that haven’t caused serious impacts. The effects in El Salvador would be terrible,” he warned.

But Bukele makes a persuasive case that a richer country is a cleaner country.

“I understand the concern. El Salvador has 95% of its waters polluted. Imagine if we pollute them further; we’ll end up with 97%, 98% contamination. The reality is that when 95% of your rivers are polluted, you shouldn’t focus on saving the remaining 5%, but on recovering the 95% that was lost,” Bukele argued on Thursday. “If we had 95% of our rivers clean, then we could focus on maintaining the status quo.”

“The only thing we can do is invest billions of dollars to clean up the polluted waters. And to have those billions, we need resources that can easily be obtained from mining,” he added, according to Diario El Salvador.