MANILA, Philippines – The proposed mining policy being crafted by the government aims to set up in one year incentives and rules for higher end processing of “strategic” minerals that raises hope of generating revenue from mining along with its increased jobs and multiplier effect to the economy.
Department of Environment and Natural Resources-Mines and Geosciences Bureau Director Leo L. Jasareno said that the proposed executive order (EO) on mining puts a target of five years on the implementation of the minerals value adding program.
“The DENR, the DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) and the private sector will formulate a national program for value adding. The EO gives a one year period from its signing for this program to be formulated. Under the mining policy, after five years, the program should be fully implemented,” he said in an interview.
However, the program to encourage the development of downstream processing industries for mining products may only focus on strategic minerals.
Such minerals may be tentatively defined as what a nation needs for industrial, military or commercial purposes and are essential to the economy, defense, medicine, and other important applications. However, the IRR or the implementing rules and regulations of this mineral value-adding program is expected to further define what these strategic minerals are.
The initial eagerness to put up a minerals value adding program is expected to be faced with hurdles as the roadblocks to the lofty aim – that of Philippine industrialization on the long term – must be numerous.
The incentives will be essential to stimulate investment inflow.
“The program is still very broad,” said Jasareno. “(The aim is) it should attract (foreign) investors because that’s capital intensive, requiring millions of dollars like the HPAL (high pressure acid leach) plant in Surigao has a capital cost of $1.4 billion,” he said.
Another proposed downstream plant – the nickel pig iron melting facility in Leyte of Century Peak Metals Holding Corp. with a capacity of 100,000 metric tons – may similarly require a high capital cost.
Mining authorities have been pushing for the country’s increased investments in strategic, critical, and high technology minerals essential to industrialization. However, while government used to put in money into the development of these minerals, particularly exploration, together with some institutions like the United Nations Development Program, these programs had stopped.
Government’s previous geological and mineral exploration programs in the 1980s through UNDP, Asian Development Bank, and bilateral agreements with Korea, US, UK, Germany, and France brought about discovery of several important big gold deposits. These include the Didipio copper gold (1990), Tampakan (1994), Boyongan (2000), and Bayugo (2004).
The MGB established in the 1970s the Petrolab in order to explore strategic, critical, and high-technology minerals. These minerals are of use for enhancing value-adding capacity to conventional products.
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Source: Manila Bulletin, March 18, 2012
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