Review of mine crackdown orders to begin end- September — official

AFTER NEARLY seven months since sanctions were imposed on mines deemed to have transgressed environment laws, the multi-agency Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) is expected to start its review of those orders by the end of September.

With a short list of mining experts and a partial budget in the bag, Finance Undersecretary Bayani H. Agabin told reporters on the sidelines of the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines’ forum last Friday, “We’re looking at end of September,” when asked for the timetable for the start of the review.

Mr. Agabin had said earlier that Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) — under Secretary Roy A. Cimatu who replaced staunch environmentalist Regina Paz L. Lopez in May — will provide P10 million, adding to another P10 million from the Department of Finance (DoF) to partly fund the review process. While the total is less than half the P50 million seen needed to complete the review, it should be enough to start the process, he had said.

The review, which is estimated to take three months to complete, will review DENR’s decision in early February to shutter more than half of the country’s 41 operating metal mines. It will be conducted by experts in the legal, social, economic, mineral development and environment dimensions of mining.

Mr. Agabin had also said that, after that review, the MICC will turn its attention on DENR’s subsequent orders in mid-February for 75 other projects still in preproduction stage to explain why they should not be similarly sanctioned for violations of environment laws.

It was that subsequent crackdown that caused the country’s wider business community to voice its concern on the integrity of the country’s investment rules,

and prompted the DoF, which cochairs the MICC with the DENR, to convene the multi- agency council.

Mr. Agabin added that MICC will also look into the DENR’s ban on open-pit mining imposed last April. “That’s the second thing that we have discussed that is important. MICC tasked the technical working group on economic fairs and on environment to again study whether open-pit mining should be allowed or not, because right now, there’s a department order that imposes a ban. We just have to re-study that,” he said.

Asked why the original schedule to start the review in March was not met, Mr. Agabin replied: “It is difficult to get experts because we want them to be independent… to be an expert you have to be working in a mine. So, we have to relax it a little bit: so ( you can) have work with the mine, but you cannot audit the mine that you work in. —