Bidding in award of mining permits pushed

Thursday, September 22, 2011

THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is proposing that awarding of mining permits be done through tendering or bidding.

“The new approach in awarding mining tenements would deter corruption,” DENR Secretary Ramon Paje said in a statement furnished Sun.Star Thursday.

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The current scheme in awarding mining permits is through the “first come, first served” basis.

He said some of the permits granted to mining companies “are being used for speculative trading or sold to other companies without generating revenue for the government.”

“This is not the kind of mining we want to encourage. The government is allowing mining operation in the country because we want to generate revenue for the government and the people and to fuel the country’s economic development,” he explained.

Aside from the proposed new approach, the DENR is also pushing to increase the current revenue sharing in mining.

“The two percent excise tax, which is the share of the government according to the Mining Act, is not enough to pay for the environment cost, considering that mining is an extractive industry. This is the reason why the DENR is pushing for the payment of five-percent royalty by mining companies,” the agency said.

Mines and Geosciences Bureau regional offices (ROs), meanwhile, have been tasked to immediately submit their respective final reports on the implementation of the DENR’s “use it or lose it” policy for mining tenements.

This came after the MGB’s Mining Tenements Management Division noted that only ROs VIII and XII have so far achieved a 100 percent accomplishment with regard the cleansing of idle or abandoned mining applications.

ROs VI, the Cordillera Administrative Region and IX have the lowest accomplishment rates at 65 percent, 64 percent and 58 percent, respectively.

“DENR-MGB is bent on cleansing the mining industry of ‘wang-wang’ or undesirables prior to resuming the granting of mining permits in the country,” Paje said. (CGC)

Published in the Sun.Star Bacolod newspaper on September 23, 2011.