Palace says miners' concerns can be addressed sans litigation

MANILA, Philippines - Malacañang assured yesterday the mining sector that a provision tends to shorten the 50-year contract of mining firms would be resolved the soonest without any need for litigation.

“We’re looking at the concerns. I believe they can be addressed. Nobody wants to see this issue being litigated. That’s not the desire of course,” Secretary Ricky Carandang of the Presidential Communications Strategic and Development Planning Office said. 

The Palace official made the assurance in the wake of the warning issued by Benjamin Philip Romualdez, president of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, during the Mining Conference 2012 held in Makati City.

Romualdez, who also sits as president and chief executive officer of Benguet Corp., described as “illegal” Section 9 of Executive Order 79’s IRR which stated that terms of mining permit extensions would be renegotiated.

According to him, this in effect runs counter to Section 32 of the Mining Act which states that permit extensions would have the same terms as the first 25 years of operations.

A portion of Section 9 of the IRR reads: “ In the case of expiring 25-year mining tenements, the qualified mining tenement holder electing to exercise its right to renew the said mining tenement for another 25-year term shall file the pertinent mining applications in the MGB (Mines and Geosciences Bureau) not later than six months prior to the expiration of the same mining tenement.”

“The mining contract/agreement that may be renewed shall be subject to new terms and conditions pursuant to the laws, and rules and regulations that are existing at the time of renewal or may be hereafter issued, such as, but not limited to, the establishment of the contract area as a mineral reservation.”

“Once these issues are ironed out, there will be less ambiguity. I think the Chamber of Mines have been apprised,” Carandang reiterated.

But Carandang’s colleague, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda, welcomed the plan of miners to sue the government over the IRR, saying the IRR provisions has been reviewed and that it could withstand legal scrutiny.

“This a free country. If they feel that there is something which they feel is not proper, they can always resort to the courts to enforce their contention. So we’ll leave it with them,” he said.

“We’ve drafted the IRR and so it’s been signed by (DENR) Secretary Ramon Paje. So we believe that it was reviewed exhaustively by the MICC. So we believe it will withstand legal scrutiny,” Lacierda added.

“Let’s just wait for the complaint to be filed and maybe at that point we can address the course of action of the mining industry,” he said.

 Lacierda explained that the government has always exhausted the widest consultation among stakeholders, noting there would always be parties who would not be contented with what has been brought to the table.

“We have always maintained that we will come up, that there will be… that is a win-win solution. But we cannot stop some sectors who feel that it has not met their desired goals to enforce their claim,” he emphasized.

Romualdez said that since the moratorium on new mining contracts were implemented since 2011, the country has been losing out on foreign direct investments, to the tune of P10 billion.

With the issuance of the new mining policy in July, the moratorium on the processing of exploration permits which were put in place since January 2011 was lifted but the government is not granting new mining contracts until Congress passes a law rationalizing the sharing of revenues between mining firms and the government.

The government is seeking a higher share of revenues from mining operations.

“This comes at a time when the government is seeking more from our industry while it has extended the moratorium on new mining projects until a new revenue measure has been agreed upon,” observed Romualdez.

“This moratorium has caused an outflow in foreign direct investments in our sector beginning in 2011 to the tune of over P10 billion. The projected $16 billion in investments that were supposed to occur during this administration will not happen,” he said.

“The $2 billion that we as a country were expecting in additional foreign direct investments this year from the minerals sector will not happen. The $2 billion that we expect in additional investments next year will not happen,” he added.