36 Mines Poised to Start Operations Within the Year

The moratorium on new mining projects has been lifted with the issuance of President Duterte’s Executive Order (EO) 130. Around 36 mining firms are primed to begin operations within the year, while more companies are geared to start in 2022.

Wilfredo Moncano, the Director of Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), said that there are 36 metallic and non-metallic mines in their current list of pending mining applications that are set to start operations soon.

Another 65 firms are up for processing as new Mineral Production Sharing Agreements (MPSAs), one of the three types of mineral agreements that the government grants to a contractor.

The sheer volume of applications is expected to keep the MGB busy throughout the year. The agency also has to process over a hundred mining applications that have already secured a “priority” status, some of which were submitted even before EO 79 was implemented 9 years ago.

“Most of them [that are up for MPSA processing] are under Priority Phase 2 (65 in all). Those under Phase 1 (36 in all) are in the last stages of their processing needing only one or two lacking documents to be completed,” said Moncano. “Lots of applications were filed prior to EO 79,” he added.

Over the previous week, President Rodrigo Duterte signed EO 130, which amended the Aquino Administration’s EO 79.

Until there’s no new legislation rationalizing the revenue-sharing scheme between the government and miners, the approval of new mining projects was banned in 2012 under EO 79.

President Duterte has ordered authorities to review existing mineral deals for avenues of renegotiation, still hoping to rationalize the current revenue-sharing scheme in the mining sector.

A combined value of $1 trillion is being projected from the Philippines’ untapped mineral resources with total estimated gold reserves of 1.9 billion metric tons (MT) and silver reserves of 1.7 billion MT.

Source: Manila Bulletin