South Cotabato town shuts down Tampakan mining
CLOSED Workers of the Tampakan local government put a notice of closure on the entry to the core farm of Sagittarius Mines Inc. in Barangay Liberty on Thursday after its business permit was revoked. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
TAMPAKAN, SOUTH COTABATO — The municipal government of Tampakan in South Cotabato province revoked the business permit of Sagittarius Mines Inc. (SMI), developer of Southeast Asia’s largest untapped copper-gold reserve, due to alleged fraud and misrepresentation of its activities.
Mayor Leonard Escobillo canceled SMI’s permit to do business in the town based on the Municipal Tax Code of 2012, which allows the local chief executive to revoke or deny business permits if the applicant deliberately makes false statements in its application.
SMI has been pursuing the controversial $5.9-billion Tampakan mining project, a near-the-surface minefield that was launched here in January 2003.
The notice of revocation of SMI’s mayor’s permit was served on Thursday by the municipality to the company’s offices here and in the town of Polomolok, also in South Cotabato, Escobillo said.
The core farm of SMI in Barangay Liberty here was padlocked as a result of the cancellation of the firm’s business permit, Escobillo added.
‘Nothing personal’
“There’s nothing personal in this case. We are just doing our obligation, which is to implement our tax ordinance (to increase local revenues),” Escobillo told reporters in a press conference on Friday.
The revocation came on the heels of a petition filed by SMI against the Tampakan municipal government before a local court asking for a review and issuance of a temporary restraining order against the collection of P397 million in accumulated taxes and surcharges it demanded from the company.
Stressing that the local government was not zeroing in on SMI, Escobillo said all business establishments had been subjected to a tax audit in a bid to improve local revenue generation.
Last month, some business establishments with deficiencies already settled their tax obligations, he said.
It was found that SMI had deficiencies for business tax between 2020 and 2022 as well as mayor’s permit fees and other regulatory fees from 2013 to 2022.
“This order of mine is not in relation to the cases they have filed,” he added.
‘False claim’
Lawyer Nena Santos, legal counsel of the Tampakan local government, stressed that the revocation of SMI’s mayor’s permit “has nothing to do” with the case filed by the firm.
Santos, speaking in the same press conference on Friday, said the closure order was done because of the alleged false statement that SMI made in its application for mayor’s permit.
“The company falsely claimed they are already into manufacturing,” she said, noting the firm has not yet gone into commercial mining operations.
Santos noted that the gross receipts the company declared with the local government were based on the sales of unserviceable assets such as tables, computers, vehicles and other equipment, which can be considered as other income but not due to the company’s mining operation.
The Inquirer sought comment from SMI but the firm had yet to reply as of press time.
From 2004 to 2011, SMI classified itself as a general engineering contractor but changed its status to a manufacturer in 2012, Santos said.
But according to Escobillo’s revocation notice, the assessment of the Municipal Treasurer’s Office classified the firm as still a general engineering contractor and not a manufacturer as claimed by the company.
Mining ban
The main obstacle to SMI’s operation of its mining tenement is South Cotabato’s environment code that bans the open-pit method of extracting the minerals.
Jaybee Garganera, coordinator of Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM), an antimining advocacy group, lauded the municipal government for “applying the law and holding the mining company accountable for its false statements in its mayor’s permit documents.”
ATM chair Rene Pamplona called the mayor’s action a “welcome development, especially among us, residents of Tampakan, who have been opposing mining in the area.”
The Tampakan project has the potential to yield an average of 375,000 tons of copper and 360,000 ounces of gold in concentrate per year over the proposed 17-year life of the mine.
For the first phase or first 10 years of the Tampakan operations, national and local taxes are pegged at P68 billion and P4 billion, respectively.
Royalty for indigenous peoples, on the other hand, is projected to reach P4.8 billion and social development and management program, P2.6 billion. —WITH A REPORT FROM JORDEENE B. LAGARE
