Resolve licensing issues to spur investments, says Chamber of Mines

Resolving mining licensing issues could yield as much as $13 billion in fresh investments, the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines said Tuesday. “We are appealing to the government to act faster in fulfilling the mining laws," said Chamber of Mines president Philip Benjamin Romualdez in a media briefing at the opening of Mining Philippines 2011 Conference and Exhibition in Pasay City. Romualdez explained that while government has made modest estimates in investments, the mining sector is more aggressively promoting greater foreign participation. The industry also wants to elevate the Philippine status as a mining country in the near future, Romualdez said. Government forecasts show that mining investments could cumulatively rise to $13 billion in the next four years. The $13 billion in capital investment should be on top of the $4 billion that has been invested since 2007 as well as the $1 billion investment in 2011, Romualdez said. Mining companies are willing to allow investments to flow if the government will keep itself sensitive to the needs of investing companies “particularly on licensing issues that have affected numerous companies that have already invested a lot of money in various stages of operations," Romualdez said. The country will see fresh capital investment only when government does its job and start processing permits that were either cancelled or denied, he added. “The lifeblood of mining revenue is being strangled. Certain permits are part of the development program. But then things came to a grinding halt, when the government started to cancel permits," Romualdez said. Protests against mining The mining conference was also met by protests, particularly environmental activists from the Defend Patrimony Alliance along with communities hit by large-scale mining, according to a press release by Kalikasan People’s Network for the Environment. “While the nation's mining magnates and foreign corporations have gathered to talk shop, the people have gathered here to advance a pro-people, pro environment mining policy that would benefit our economy and communities," said Defend Patrimony convenor Clemente Bautista in a statement. Bautista clarified that by staging a protest at the opening of the conference, Defend Patrimony is not opposing mining and foreign investment per se, but the industry’s so-called foreign-dominated and export-oriented production. “By just having a revenue-transparent and domestic-oriented mining production we could have saved billions of pesos that could have been used for local development and social services," Bautista said. “The prevalence of corruption and non-transparency in the industry, mining companies under report their production to evade taxes and short change the government," Bautista alleged. China investors Meanwhile, the Mines and Geosciences Bureau chief said pledges by China investors could help the Philippine government raise its investment target in the mining sector by more than twice this year. Investments could reach $2.8 billion from the original $1.4-billion target if the commitments from China “are turned into real investments," said MGB director Leo Jasareno in an interview with reporters at the sidelines of the Mining Philippines 2011. “We have not taken into account probably investments from the Chinese when we did our projection for 2011 last year," Jasareno explained. — With Paterno Esmaquel II/VS, GMA News