Mountain Province ore, mine tailings transported overseas

HAPPY WEEKEND
Gina Dizon

SAGADA, Mountain Province -- The Chinese, Koreans and Bangladeshis are buying mine tailings and mine ore from small scale miners in Mountain Province. Mine tailings find their way inside the country where processing plants are found.

Some are transported all the way to Poro Point. Some mine tailings and mineral ores find their way to China for processing, a small scale miner- mine tailings dealer said. In order to avoid getting questioned in police checkpoints because he does not have an ore transport permit, he transports the mineral ores and tailings at night time and travels via farm to market roads where there are no police.

With illegal business starting from the mining site due to illegal mining activities, the goods find their way to open outlets posing irresistible questions on why these are getting smuggled out of the country without being taxed.

Mine tailings and mineral ores getting out from Mountain Province may be one of those undeclared and untaxed wealth getting out of the country to China.

Asia Sentinel reports in “China’s Filipino Gold Rush, Chinese mining companies, many of them operating illegally, have been exporting gold, nickel and other precious minerals out through the island - country’s coastal ports, where there are no customs officials while plenty of officials are bribed to turn their eyes the other way.”

Miners extract gold and copper operating without any permit issued by the Provincial Mining and Regulatory Board. There are no fees to be declared for mineral taxes in the province where the minerals and mine tailings come from.

And yes, in coastal towns where the Bureau of Customs is nowhere to be found, there goes the wealth of the country going bye bye to China. No mineral taxes, no export taxes, no taxes whatsoever while money is flowing out from proceeds of mine tailings and gold ore said to be legally owned by the State.

As of now, of the gold registered as leaving the Philippines, only 3 percent of the exports are registered with customs officials. The other 97 percent arrives in Hong Kong without being taxed by the government in Manila, resulting in a massive tax loss”, Asia Sentinel reports.

The 97% of gold leaving the Philippines illegally is somehow legally entering Hong Kong as HK trade statistics showed that “gold consignments imported from Philippines into Hong Kong had been declared,” the Sentinel added.

And back in the Mountain Province where large scale mining is banned, the Chinese, Koreans and Bangladeshis are having their heyday dealing with local small scale miners, buying gold ore mined from the ancestral domains by indigenous peoples -miners themselves who are paid for their labor by ore dealers. A small scale miner said one bag of mine tailings cost P75 each and P400 per sack of raw gold ore.
Do our miners ever know how much the gold and copper concentrates cost when these are finally extracted?

And do foreigners buying gold ores and mine tailings need applications for mining permits like Financial or Technical Assistance Agreements and exploration permits? If you can get the gold by telling local miners to mine their nava and pay them for their labor, do you need stringent requirements and protocols dictated by Philippine law?

Based from the Pacific and Strategies Assessment in their study, “Exploitive Chinese Mining in the Philippines”, Chinese `mining firms are not playing by the same business ethics, rules and practices which Western mining firms are expected to follow.

PSA reports, Chinese firms hide “under the cover of domestic small-scale miners to bypass Philippine mining laws and protocols as well as avoid the large capital requirements, fees and taxes associated with large-scale mining.”

Registered or not with the Provincial Mining and Regulatory Board, foreigners are dealing anyway with small scale miners and buying their gold ores and mine tailings.

This loose and unjust mining industry is not right. As long as the mine tailings and mined ores illegally get out of the country and foreigners process these inside the country and export the products under illegal ways while Philippine authorities are helpless, stupid, naïve or are into smuggling and extortion big time, the wealth of the country and the minerals “owned by the State” shall not give Juan de la Cruz a decent meal, housing and clothing for his family in exchange for the sweat and capital he has poured in the mine sites which he considers as his ownership.

Surely, this country should be able to provide the necessary support as processing equipment and technology to maximize the wealth that Mountain Province miners, Cordillera miners and Filipino miners in exchange for their labor and capital to mine gold or copper from the underground tunnels of the earth and eventually sell mine tailings or ore in order to bring home decent food for their families.

As it is, this mineral- exploited country has lost at least 3 million metric tons of untaxed various mineral ores brought to China, as noted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in 2008.

Meantime, Mountain Province maintains a NO stand on large scale mining entering their territories manifested in resolutions of officials of mineral rich municipalities of Bauko, Tadian, Sagada, Bontoc, Sadanga against mining applications and further supported by the SangguniangPanlalawigan in a couple of resolutions.

What gives these resolutions and the peoples stand against large scale mining?

Chinese leader Deng Xiao Ping’s guiding principle, “black cat or white cat, it doesn’t matter as long as it catches the mice”! is a living practice in Chinese mining in the Philippines.

And while that is so, pollution and geo-hazard threats due mining are other issues for another story.