The Financial Express (Delhi Edition)
INDIA WOOS RARE EARTH MINERALS EXPLORERS
To issue policy guidelines to boost private sector exploration
INDIA is set to issue new policy guidelines to encouragemore private-sector exploration for the so called rare earth minerals used in everything from mobile phones to lasers and cruise missiles.
The framework due by the end of June will demarcate a total area of 1,000 square km where companies can search for rare earths, and introduce auctions for the right to explore for the deposits, according to Balvinder Kumar, the top bureaucrat in the ministry of mines.
“At the moment it isn’t clear about who can explore which areas," Kumar said in an interview Tuesday in New Delhi. “There will be clarity now.” India has one of the world’s bigger reserves of rare earths, a group of obscure minerals produced mostly by mines in China. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is trying to cut the complex red tape and land acquisition hurdles that have prevented the nation from fully exploiting not just rare earths, but also rich seams of resources such as coal, bauxite and gold.
The region to be earmarked for exploration includes Kerala and Tamil Nadu, according to Kumar, with another 400 square km set aside exclusively for staterun firms to search for uranium and thorium. Following a policy change last year, explorershave to bid in auctions for the right to mine deposits they find. For critics, that leaves little incentive to scour the world’s seventh-largest land mass for minerals and metals, as the discoverer could lose the find to another bidder.
The government plans to introduce a system of royalties for explorers over the life of a mine to help plug the gap.
Even though used in small quantities, rare earth elements are key components in high-technology products, ranging from mobile phones to electric cars to defense guidance systems.
State-run Indian Rare Earths helped the nation mine 2,800 tonne of such ore in 2013, or 2.5% of the global total, according to a presentationby the company citing US Geological Survey data.