Mining is country’s key to prosperity

The country sits on a mountain of gold and other precious minerals.

It would be the height of stupidity not to mine these and earn trillions of pesos for the country.

Mining, when exploited the proper way, is our passport to becoming a first world country.

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In the past, mining destroyed our environment just like illegal and irresponsible logging did.

But the government has learned a bitter lesson from the past, and will surely take steps to protect the environment.

People and institutions learn from their bad experiences in the past.

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The reason environmentalists have the upper hand on the debate to make mining the country’s major industry is because of the destruction wrought by irresponsible miners in the past.

But past is past, and we can look forward to a brighter future through responsible mining.

If the government bans mining completely, as antimining advocates want, illegal mining activities will still go on because it’s very profitable.

The risk is worth the trouble.

“The solution is not to ban mining but to control it,” says Peter Wallace of the Wallace Business Forum.

Wallace says the Philippines cannot become a great country if we continue to ban mining.

Look at the benefits that mining brings to a country, according to Wallace: Hundreds of thousands jobs would be created, more roads would be built and water and electricity would reach far-flung areas.

Wallace knows of what he speaks. Australia, his mother country, became very prosperous because of mining.

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Let’s listen to a man from the “neutral” corner say something about mining.

Lawyer Christian Monsod, a former Commission on Elections commissioner and husband of feisty columnist Winnie Monsod, says mining can benefit the country if four conditions are met:

1) That environment and social costs are taken into account;

2) That the country gets full share of the value of extracted minerals;

3) That strict laws on mining are implemented;

4) That money for mining must be used to create new capital, including human capital, and boost infrastructure in the countryside.

If the government follows Monsod’s very strict parameters on mining, there is no reason we will continue to be a poor country.

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This is the tax season and corrupt members of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) are having a grand time.

A doctor friend told me that some BIR examiners demand money “for the boys” more than what they ask for the government.

For example, a doctor at the Asian Medical Center told me that certain BIR examiners would not accept as reason the fact that he was out of the country for two weeks and therefore didn’t earn money during his absence.

“They demanded a letter from the hospital administrator giving me permission to go abroad even when they saw that my office didn’t earn a single centavo in professional fees during the period,” he said.

The taxmen told him he owed the government P50,000 in taxes, but that they would settle for P30,000 with a receipt showing he only paid P10,000 to the BIR.

This meant that P20,000 would go to the pockets of the BIR examiners.

Daang matuwid (straight and narrow path), my eye!

Make that daang baku-bako at paliku-liko (rough and winding road).