The interagency Mining Industry Coordinating Council is set to launch the second round of “objective, science-based and fact-finding” audit of mining operations later this month, Finance Undersecretary Bayani Agabin said Tuesday.
Agabin said the review would cover 17 mining operations across the country and would be conducted by the same technical teams that undertook the first round of review last year covering 26 mines. The second round was expected to be completed by January 2020.
He said the MICC would complete the composition of management teams by the second or third week of July. “We will tap around 15 experts from the same technical teams that did the first audit,” said Agabin who chaired the MICC meeting held recently at the DOF main office in Manila.
Agabin said the 15 experts would be grouped into three teams with five members for each panel. They would include senior and junior technical and research assistants to help them with the audit.
The review will cover the environmental, economic, social, legal and technical aspects of the mining operations, he said.
The MICC earlier deferred a recommendation on the lifting of the moratorium on the issuance of new mineral agreements
Executive Order 79 imposed a moratorium on new mineral agreements “until a legislation rationalizing existing revenue sharing schemes and mechanisms shall have taken effect”.
The Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion Law or Republic Act 10963 increased the excise tax on mineral products from 2 percent to 4 percent. The Environment Department asked if the increase had satisfied the condition of the law rationalizing the existing revenue sharing scheme.
The Finance Department, however, said the Train law only increased the excise taxes and did not cover the implementation of a new fiscal regime for mining. The new fiscal regime proposed by the DOF covers other taxes and fees, such as royalty, windfall, profit and incentives.
After considering the clarification, the MICC resolved to defer a recommendation to lift the moratorium on new mineral agreements, saying that a new revenue-sharing scheme and mechanisms for mining would be covered in Package 2 plus of the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program which will have to be refiled in the incoming 18th Congress.
