The Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ (DENR) Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) is preparing a draft Executive Order (EO) to submit to Malacañang that aims to address outdated provisions in existing laws that hinder the development of mining operations in the country.

On the sidelines of a mining forum in Mandaluyong City on Thursday, Oct. 17, DENR Undersecretary for Integrated Sciences Carlos Primo David said that the DENR is working with the Department of Finance on the draft EO that is expected to address business continuity risks from local government units and communities and mining royalties.

According to David, these challenges often cause mining firms to be in a wait-and-see mode.

“For any royalty, you will have to put a ceiling because if there is no ceiling, it can be one percent, two percent, 10 percent, up to 100 percent. That is something that we have to address,” David said, adding that existing laws only specify the minimum amount of royalty to be paid.

On top of this, mining companies operating within IPs’ ancestral lands are required to pay another set of royalties to the said community.

Michael Toledo, chairman and president of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, shared the same view, citing, for instance, a huge mining project that has already been stalled for decades.

“We all know, without mentioning the project, that it took more than 30 years for this project to take off simply because there was a local ordinance that went against the national law. How come a local ordinance be beyond a statute for a national law?” Toledo said.

“For some reason, this has not been questioned for the longest time, but things will change. We will now definitely question it if we need to, in a class action suit if possible, but hopefully, that will be prevented when we come up with clear policies on how LGUs should be dealing with the national government and comply with the laws of the land,” he added.

Toledo supported the creation of a mining policy that would clarify the role of the national and local governments and specify the approach to the indigenous communities.

In addition, he said the EO must also simplify and expedite the approval of processes for mineral agreements by reducing application steps, eliminating redundancies, and imposing clear-cut timelines in close coordination with government agencies with which the mining industry interacts.