FINANCE Secretary Carlos Dominguez III said Thursday the suspension of mining operations in the country will “never” happen again without due process as a strong governance framework is what the industry needs and not an “arbitrary” ban.
“… Never again will suspension be meted out on unseen audits… and without legal basis. The solution is to improve governance, to ensure sustainability of the environment…,” Dominguez said during the opening ceremony of the Philippine Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative national conference at The Manila Hotel.
Former Environment Secretary Gina Lopez refused to release the audit results and the actual documents on the 23 closed and five suspended mining firms in early February.
Dominguez assured the stakeholders in the extractive industries that the Duterte administration “will be firm but fair” in exercising strong governance while practicing transparency in all its processes and abiding by global best practices in ensuring sustainable development.
“The solution is not to arbitrarily ban extractive industries, whatever contractual obligations government has with investors,” Dominguez said.
“The solution is to improve governance so that we get the best of both worlds: Ensuring the sustainability of our environment on one hand and creating wealth for our people from our natural endowments on the other.”
To ensure transparency, Dominguez said, suspensions “on the basis of unseen audits” and “honest industries subjected to levies without legal basis” would “never again” happen on Duterte’s watch.
“One could be environment-friendly and business-friendly at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive inclinations. Only the zealots think they are,” he said.
“We need to encourage and not suppress the extractive industries. They are necessary to help our economy develop, to bring the revenues that government needs and to create opportunities for the communities that host these industries.”
Lopez’ appointment as Environment chief was finally rejected by the Commission on Appointments early this month after she was bypassed by the commission twice earlier.
Dominguez, who co-chairs the Mining Industry Coordinating Council with the secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, likewise expressed his support for the Philippines’ participation in EITI to set standards of honesty and openness, along with the benchmarks of responsibility to the communities hosting the extractive industries.
EITI is an international initiative that promotes a global standard of transparency in the extractive industries. The Philippines was admitted as an EITI candidate country in May 2013. The validation of its bid to be EITI-compliant is expected to be known next month.
Meanwhile, the third PH EITI report released Thursday showed that the total revenue collection in 2014 from mining and oil and gas companies grew 32 percent to P53.8 billion over the 2013 level.
Of this amount, the mining firms accounted for P11.4 billion and the oil and gas companies P42.4 billion. The Department of Energy was responsible for 50 percent of the total collection while the Bureau of Internal Revenue accounted for 43.7 percent.