Philippines ends opencast mining ban to revive industry

The Philippines has lifted a four-year ban on opencast mining of copper, gold, silver and complex minerals, the second landmark policy move by the government this year to revive the industry, an official said on Tuesday.

Wilfredo Moncano, director of the Bureau of Mines and Geosciences, said the Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, Roy Cimatu, had signed an executive order lifting the ban.

The government imposed the ban in 2017, when the ministry responsible for overseeing the mining industry was led by an anti-mining advocate who accused the mining industry of causing widespread damage to the environment.

After years of restrictive policies that have been accused of stagnating the industry, the government now hopes that stagnant and new mining projects will attract investment and help stimulate economies affected by the pandemic.

In April, President Rodrigo Duterte lifted a moratorium on a new mining agreement implemented in 2012.

Moncano said that open-pit mining is still a globally recognized method of mineral mining.

The ban was enforced by Regina Lopez, Cimatu's predecessor in the Ministry of the Environment, angering miners who believed that large amounts of copper and gold in the country could only be mined through open-pit mining.

However, environmental activists expressed disappointment at the reversal of the policy. The, Alyansa Tigil Mina (ended the Mining Alliance) described it as "the government's short-sightedness and misplaced development priority".

With the launch of new mining projects, the annual export revenue of the Philippine mineral mining industry could increase by as much as $2 billion over the next five to six years, according to the government.

The Southeast Asian country is China's largest supplier of nickel and has large reserves of copper and gold.

More than 1/3 of the Philippines'30 million hectares (74.1 million acres) of land is considered to have "high mineral potential", but so far less than 5 per cent of its mineral reserves have been mined, according to the mining bureau.

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