View from mining industry’s side

In recent days I ran several pieces about the dark side of mining. Among them are studies of poverty and joblessness worsening in mining regions, and looming disaster from tailings dams. As a rejoinder of sorts, the Chamber of Mines sent some industry figures and concerns. In fair play, I present them as the view from the other side.

First, the industry figures:

• Mining employed 340,000 Filipinos last year, with 1.7 million more benefiting in a five-times multiplier effect. Exports amounted to $1.87 billion in 2010, and $513 million in the first quarter of 2011  4.3 percent of total exports. (In the ’70s mining accounted for one-fifth of exports, peaking at 24 percent.)

• Revenues last year totaled $2.09 billion; investments, $955.58 million. In 2009 large-scale miners paid P1.4 billion taxes and contributed two percent (P29.4 billion) to GDP. Investment potential in the next five years: $14 billion-$20 billion.

“Can you imagine how many more jobs such huge investments can create, not to mention the poverty alleviation?” the Chamber asks. But “roadblocks” supposedly stunt mining growth:

1. Some local governments impose bans in their locales, like South Cotabato and Zamboanga del Norte, against open-pit mining. The Chamber blames it on “misconceptions” about mining.

2. Other local governments issue permits to small-scale miners, unlike large-scale ones that deal with national agencies, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and its Mines and Geosciences Bureau. “There appears to be very little state control over small-scale miners,” the Chamber says. “Monitoring of their operations is loose, thus the risk of damage to the ecology and miners’ health.”

3. Ancestral land claims clash with mine claims. Certificates of Ancestral Domain Titles overlap with Mineral Production Sharing Agreements and exploration sites. Conflict sparks when interlopers bribe tribesmen into issuing Free Prior and Informed Consents to buttress false claims to areas where legit explorers already operate.

4. The Chamber views as “judicial intervention” the Supreme Court’s Writs of Kalikasan. One such writ, in August, ordered the government to answer a petition against mining the Zamboanga peninsula for ruining the environment and communities.

5. The Chamber deems some acts of the DENR as obstructive. Like, the conversion of exploration and mining projects and tenements into mineral reservations, and the increase in excise taxes from two percent to seven percent.

Chamber leaders, under president Philip Romualdez, say they are ready to sit down with the authorities to settle the issues. (Romualdez’s Benguet Corp. recently announced P1.18 billion net income in the nine months to Sept. 2011.) –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)