Albay bans future mining activities – INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos.

By Mar S. Arguelles
Inquirer Southern Luzon
Source: inquirer.net
Filed Under: Mining and quarrying, Local authorities, Politics, Environmental Politics

LEGAZPI CITY—Mining companies eager to lay their hands on Albay’s rich mineral resources will now face stiff opposition from the provincial government.

Governor Joey Salceda signed on Friday the provincial board resolution strongly opposing any future mining activity in the province.

Declaring a mining ban in Albay has become necessary because mining activities would “indubitably jeopardize the environment including depletion of the province’s mineral and natural resources,” said the resolution, passed by the provincial board on March 8 and authored by Board Member Arnold Embestero.

Salceda’s signing of the antimining measure came on the heels of a report from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) in Bicol trumpeting the achievement of the mining sector in the region, including the Rapu-Rapu Polymetallic Project (RRPP) operated in Rapu-Rapu town by a Korean-Malaysian-Filipino consortium.

The sector produced P11.4 billion worth of gold, silver, copper and cement last year and paid P782.6 million in taxes to the national government.

Salceda has lashed out at the gains that Bicol got from mining, saying the benefit was “a tiny gesture” compared to the billions of pesos worth of mineral resources extracted from the region.

He added that the gain from mining operations was artificial and merely bloated the region’s Gross Value Added (GVA).

GVA measures the contribution to the economy of each individual producer, industry or sector in the country. It is used to estimate Gross Domestic Product, a key indicator of the state of the economy.

He said only the mining giants benefited from the billions of pesos they earned because even with the almost P800 million in taxes they paid, the region was expected to get only P40 million, a measly 3 percent, in social fund from the national government.

“This report only makes me more angry, and more committed to oppose mining in Albay,” Salceda said.

He lamented that the billions in pesos that the mining firms earned from their operations were never remitted to the Philippines.

“They paid taxes of P782 million where we have little share and have not received our share at all. There is that social fund of P41.71 million or only 3 percent. So graphically Lilliputian to the P11.7 billion of Gulliver,” Salceda said.

If he had a say on the matter, he said he would stop mining operations to prevent disasters.

“As the leader of my province, I am so ashamed I could not stop this national imposition,” said Salceda, referring to mining laws that grant the Department of Environment and Natural Resources the sole authority to approve large-scale mining.

MGB-Bicol director Reynulfo A. Juan last week said the MGB would welcome only new mining ventures that would operate responsibly.