Published May 11, 2017, 10:00 PM By Chino S. Leyco
Scrupulous companies engaged in
extractive industries will be treated fairly, Finance Secretary Carlos G.
Dominguez III, who is co-chairman of the Mining Industry Coordinating Council
(MICC), assured yesterday following a change in leadership at the Department of
Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).
At the Philippine Extractive
Industries Transparency Initiative (PH-EITI) national conference at the Manila
Hotel, Dominguez vowed that the government will be transparent in its policies
on extractive sectors, including mining.
“Never again should suspensions be
meted out on the basis of unseen audits,” Dominguez said in a speech. “Never
again should honest industries be subjected to levies without legal basis.”
The finance chief said that strong
governance framework, not an arbitrary ban on extractive sector, will let the
country create wealth for the people from the country’s natural resources,
while ensuring the sustainability of the environment.
Dominguez also said that the Duterte
administration “will be firm but fair” in exercising strong governance, while
practicing transparency in all its processes and abiding by global best
practices in ensuring sustainable development.
“We need to encourage and not
suppress extractive industries. They are necessary to help our economy develop,
to bring the revenues that government needs and to create opportunities for the
communities that host these industries,” he said.
Dominguez, who co-chairs the Mining
Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) with the Secretary of the DENR, likewise,
expressed his support for the Philippines’ participation in EITI.
He explained the country’s
participation in EITI will set standards of honesty and openness, along with
benchmarks of responsibility to communities hosting the extractive industries.
He also lauded government agencies,
civil society organizations and the local government units (LGUs)
involved in the PH-EITI’s “good work” of encouraging all
stakeholders to adopt global best practices in governing extractive industries.
“If we have full disclosure of what
was taken and what was earned, then we can have a full accounting of what needs
to be remediated and how much the commons deserve,” Dominguez said.
He also said “only full transparency
can build an atmosphere of trust among stakeholders” and assure the public
“that businesses are run with integrity and regulations enforced with
competence.”
“Otherwise, there can only be
a cloud of uncertainty, suspiciousness and fear. With such an unhealthy cloud,
there will be no social peace,” he said.
A former DENR secretary, Dominguez
noted that good governance and dialogue were not always the norm in the
extractive industries, as he recalled the time when poor governance resulted in
massive deforestation and left the country with only 11 percent of its forest
cover.
“Businesses engaged in extractive
industries were once vilified by environmental zealots. Instead of dialogue and
broad agreement on the standards of governance, there was recrimination,” he
said.
Dominguez said “poor governance
caused us to lose our forests without emancipating our people” which “should
never happen again.”’
“Good governance, in contrast,
should embolden us to attract investments in extractive industries, confident
that we will be able to assure sustainable forestry and mining,” Dominguez said.
“A strong governance framework will
ensure that mining companies remediate the mining sites. This is, after all,
what government is all about: it enables the community to do things, to create
wealth that benefits all and to draw from the environment without diminishing
it,” he said.
He said a proper governance
framework will enable Filipinos to benefit from investments in extractive
industries, which on their end, should always be transparent and vigilant
against causing harm to the environment and the people.
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