Monday, May 25, 2009

Mining Friendly Nations

Interesting charts from Fraser Institute depicting the pecking order of Mining Friendly nations.
Notice that the Philippines ranks near the bottom of the chart, despite the thrust to promote the industry.

Based on mineral potential relative to current regulations and land use restrictions, the Philippines was rated nearly 60%, which means we are far from harnessing our fullest potentials.

However, assuming no land use restrictions and assuming industry “best practices”, the Philippines leaps to the higher echelons. This implies regulatory obstacles have been a key deterrent to the industry's Growth.

The following are anonymous comments by local mining participants on the industry (bold emphasis mine).

``Philippines [has] unclear policies, extremely high level of official corruption, a banana-republic approach to governmental administration, the civil war in the south and fighting elsewhere between government forces and the NPA [New People’s Army] insurgency."—Exploration company, company vice-president

``In Philippines, the law is promoting the development of the mining industry but at the same time strict on environmental and social responsibilities."—Producer company with more than US$50M revenue, company president

All said, the Philippines needs to foster a mining friendly investment environment by easing up on regulations to encourage more growth in the industry.

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