President Benigno Aquino III hinted on Thursday that the much-awaited executive order on mining will be out in a month following the submission of his Cabinet cluster on environment and economy of a draft policy statement for the sector.
“I’m as excited as you are to see the finished draft,” Aquino said in an interview at the sidelines of the inauguration of the Philippine Expeditionary Force to Korea’s (PEFTOK) Korean War Memorial Hall at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in Taguig City.
The President said that the new series of consultations should “not take months” to complete.
“It is still not a finished policy; it is still a work in progress. What they presented was a policy statement. This will be vetted or passed through the various stakeholders,” he said.
“They (Cabinet clusters) asked for permission to go through a series of consultations with all of the stakeholders before adopting this final draft, so it’s not yet finished,” he added.
The President, however, stressed that the government will pursue a policy that allows it to receive its fair share of mining revenues while protecting the ecology.
The draft, he said, has retained a provision for 78 ecotourism areas in the country where mining would be banned.
The administration had earlier failed to meet its self-imposed February deadline to come out with an executive order on mining regulations in the country.
Release of the new EO had been keenly awaited, as recent months have seen an increasing polarization between certain advocacy groups calling for an extreme—an absolute ban on mining, calling it a destructive activity---and the Chamber of Mines pointing to the economic gains from mining and the fact that its production is indispensable to all economic activity and daily life.
