THE REVIEW of mine closure orders is now expected to start by mid-January, nearly a year after the Environment department issued the orders, the Finance department said.

Finance Undersecretary Bayani H. Agabin said that the review process was delayed by the need to secure funding.

“As usual the deadline was moved, as what had happened several times already. Again we had to deal with bureaucracy. But we can probably say we are closer now than where we were before,” Mr. Agabin told reporters in a chance interview after the Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) meeting last week.

“We are looking at maybe the second week of January,” added Mr. Agabin.

The review was initially set for March, and then deferred to September.

He said that the pool of experts who will participate in the review are now identified, with their contracts ready for signing.

“It’s a question of funds; the terms of reference are ready,” he added.

The MICC has no funding in the General Appropriations Act.

Executive Order No. 79, which creates the MICC, only allows government agencies involved to source funds from their own budgets. The council is co-chaired by the Department of Finance (DoF) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

“They were scrounging around and there were only two volunteers — DoF and DENR, and so we have to scrounge for funds. And in government, these things take time, looking for funds and putting it there,” Mr. Agabin said.

He said that the DENR is bringing in P10 million, and the DoF P15 million, which would be “enough” to finance the review.

Former Environment Secretary Regina Paz L. Lopez on Feb. 1 ordered the closure of 26 of the country’s 41 mines due to violations such as being located in watersheds and polluting surrounding bodies of water.

President Rodrigo R. Duterte has backed Ms. Lopez’s order, saying that the Philippines can survive without a mining industry.

The MICC, through five independent teams of experts, will investigate the legality of the closures, and issue recommendations taking into account the economic, technical, and social implications of the order.

MICC earlier said that it would tap the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP) to implement and manage the “fact-finding and science-based” review process on these mining operations.

The council has said that the review will group mines by location and type of ore. The first team will investigate gold, copper and nickel mines in the Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan Valley, and Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan; with the second team to investigate iron and nickel mines in Central Luzon; the third team will look into chromite, nickel and iron mines in the Eastern Visayas and Caraga; the fourth and fifth teams on the other hand will handle nickel and chromite mines in the Caraga region. — Elijah Joseph C. Tubayan

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR