Certain mining policies in the country, including the ban on open pit mining, continue to deter potential investments into the country, according to the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP).
At the Arangkada forum yesterday, COMP chairman Gerard Brimo said despite the potential of the country’s mining industry, the opportunity to grow it has been squandered.
“Whatever growth we read about today is not the result of a growing industry, but higher metal prices that we have been recently enjoying,” Brimo said.
“The problem is that policies went against the industry starting 2012, when a moratorium on new mining permits was put in place by presidential executive order, the reason being was because the industry was not paying enough taxes,” he said.
Brimo pointed out hat it took years for the said policy to be lifted as Executive Order 130, allowing the government to enter into new mineral agreements, was only issued by President Duterte earlier this year.
“Of course we are thankful to the government for the lifting. But there is yet another policy problem that remains in place, and therefore continues to put a break on the growth of industry and that is the ban on open pit mining, which was instituted by the former secretary in 2017,” Brimo said.
He said the ban was issued despite open pit mining being used all over the world to extract near surface deposits that cannot be extracted by underground methods.
“There are thousands of open pit mines even in developed and large mining countries like Australia, Canada, and US,” he said.
Last month, Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) director Wilfredo Moncano said he was hopeful that the draft department administrative order (DAO) lifting the ban on open pit mining would be signed before the end of the Duterte administration.
In addition to the policies against mining, Brimo also cited the case of a foreign mining company, which had to wait for two years for its permit to be renewed in the Philippines because of a dispute with a local government unit.
“It is not hard to imagine that the impact on global mining resource investors has been severe,”Brimo said.
He said the Philippines is no longer on the radar of global mining investors, citing results of a survey by Canadian think-tank Frasier Institute, which excluded the country .
Aside from lifting the ban on open pit mining, other changes that have to be made to be able to attract investors, according to Brimo include the scrapping of all provincial ordinances which ban mining.
He also cited the need to rationalize no go zones for mining.
“Yes, there are areas where mining should not take place. That is clearly recognized, but let’s not go overboard and use that to stymie the growth of the industry,”Brimo said.
Meanwhile, COMP announced that it has adopted the Climate Change Protocol of the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) initiative, which brings the number of measurement tools that its members will use to grade their environmental and social performance.