Contrasting reports on mining’s benefit

Mining is on the verge of boom. Close to $1 billion was invested in the industry last year. And the Chamber of Mines expects $14-$20 billion in the next five years. Chamber president Philip Romualdez gave such rosy figures last week to the Philippine Business Conference. He warned though that, “There is a concerted effort to stop the growth of mining on its tracks.”

Highlights of Romualdez’s “Philippine Minerals Development Industry Roadmap: A Stakeholder Approach”:

• Philippine mining was the world’s 4th largest in the ’80s, with Benguet Corp. in gold, Atlas Consolidated in copper, Nonoc in nickel. Forty-five mines contributed 21 percent of exports. A global oil crisis, the end of parity rights with the US, decline in metal prices, and debt burden weakened the industry.

• When the Mining Act passed in 1995 its constitutionality immediately was questioned. The Supreme Court affirmed the law nine years later in 2004, so the rejuvenated industry is less than a decade old.

• High prospects in gold, copper, nickel, iron and chromite attract new investments. Mining is regaining lost ground, posting 12.1-percent growth in 2010, when the Philippine GDP at 7.3 percent was the highest in 25 years. Mineral exports, led by copper and gold, grew 27 percent to $1.87 billion, from $1.47 billion in 2009. In first quarter-2011 mining accounted for 4.3 percent of exports, at $513 million. While agriculture kept the economy afloat in first half-2011, it was mining, with manufacturing, that provided the much-needed economic boost, to withstand a global economic downturn in the second half.

• Mining investments reached $1 billion in 2010. Government expects $3.4 billion more by end-2011. “If things run smooth, with emphasis on if, $14-$20 billion more will come in the next five years — investments that President Aquino is so determined to attract to provide jobs for, and alleviate poverty among, millions of Filipinos.”

• Presently operating are 27 metal mines, one nickel processing plant, one copper smelter, and one gold refinery. Approved and registered mining permits: 682. Applications being processed: 2,717. Philippine mining pays the highest tax rates in East Asia.

• “Some sectors continue to lay roadblocks against mining, notably the No to Mining in Palawan movement, alternative mining bills in Congress, the ban on open-pit mining in South Cotabato (with other provinces following suit), the Writ of Kalikasan against mining firms in the Zamboanga Peninsula on petition of a Cebu NGO, and a seeming bias of the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples against legitimate large-scale miners.”

• Illegal, destructive and hazardous small-scale mining is damaging the reputation of legitimate large-scale miners. Same with the three-year delay by the national government to give local counterparts their share in excise tax collections from mining. The recent communist rebel attacks on three mines in Surigao was a costly P1-billion trial by publicity against the industry.

• Still the industry will strive to work closer with stakeholders: government, church, media, civil society, environmentalists, and disrupted communities. The mining sector is the biggest tree planter, with more than 15 million trees in 2000-2010; another 25 million slated for 2011-2016.

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Also last week among earth NGOs circulated figures on poverty by sector and region, from the National Statistics Office. Pertinent to the mining industry were those in 2009.

Like, while agriculture employed 4.18 million, mining gave work to only 65,158. And yet, mining had the highest poverty incidence, 48.71 percent, compared to agriculture, construction, transportation and communications, manufacturing, services, trade, utilities, and finance.

Too, regions that depended on mining were among the poorest. Notable were eastern and western Mindanao, including their respective Surigao and Zamboanga Peninsula. Regions that opted for either tourism or agriculture, like Ilocos, Cagayan, Western and Central Visayas, were better off. –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)