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Gold smuggling thrives across Myanmar’s borders (Bangkok Post – March 16, 2016)

http://www.bangkokpost.com/

YANGON — The thriving illegal business in gold across Myanmar’s porous borders is likely to continue unchecked until the government legalises trade of the raw material, traders and industry sources said.

Industry bodies have asked the Commerce Ministry to strike the precious metal from its list of restricted goods, saying this would boost government coffers and help to combat smuggling, the Myanmar Times reported on Wednesday.

Traders exploit international price differences for the raw material, selling to smugglers who transport the metal out of the country, said Myo Myint, chair of the Yangon Region Gold Entrepreneurs Association.

Gold enters and leaves Myanmar through Muse on the Chinese border, Myawaddy on the Thai border and Maungdaw on the border with Bangladesh, he said.

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Wynyard, Sask., ‘really excited’ for new potash mine (CBC News Saskatoon – March 16, 2016)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/

A new potash mine set to open near Wynyard, Sask., a town about 190 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon, has the community “really excited.”

“It’s great news for our community,” said Wynyard mayor Ted Czarnecki. “It’s rare that you hear much good news these days with all the uncertainty of projects out there.”

Karnalyte Resources Inc., a Saskatoon-based potash company, announced Monday that an agreement had been made with an India-based fertilizer company, Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals Ltd., to finance the construction of a potash mine and a mineral mine in Wynyard.

Karnalyte founder and president Robin Phinney said this is the company’s most significant milestone, with a fully-financed deal to build the potash mine in Saskatchewan.

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Indonesia hopes four new smelters complete in 2016 -mining official (Reuters U.S. – March 16, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

Indonesia hopes four new smelters will be completed in 2016, a mining ministry official said on Wednesday, as low commodity prices continue to create financial problems for the mining industry and shrink government returns.

Indonesia banned metal ore shipments in early 2014 to encourage firms to build smelters and shift exports from raw materials to higher-value finished metals. But the ban cost the country, the world’s top nickel ore exporter at the time and a major supplier of bauxite, billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Dozens of smelter projects have been delayed, many of them in nickel, as a result of the current downturn in commodity prices, and only five nickel smelters of a targeted 12 were completed last year.

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End of Eden? Mining push in Philippines ends isolation of islanders – by Ralph Jennings (Christian Science Monitor – March 14, 2016)

http://www.csmonitor.com/

PUERTO GALERA, PHILIPPINES — A path cut through a forest hillside outside this resort town is no ordinary road. It will soon connect the modern world to an indigenous tribal group that until now has lived mostly in pre-modern isolation.

Does this road represent the end of a lifestyle and of farming and food sources that villagers have relied on for millennia?

Ask Gabayno Uybad. He grew up in a typical indigenous Mangyan village on Mindoro Island, far from the developed coastline. The community, where people farm both for themselves and the collective, lies seven miles from a modern highway.

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India’s GSFC backstops first phase of Karnalyte’s Canada potash mine – by Rod Nickel (Reuters India – March 14, 2016)

http://in.reuters.com/

WINNIPEG, MANITOBA – India’s Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals Ltd has agreed to guarantee payments on $700 million in debt to finance the first phase of Karnalyte Resources Inc’s Canadian potash mine project, Karnalyte said on Monday, adding supply even as other miners cut production. The company’s shares jumped 76 percent in Toronto to C$1.55.

Under the deal, a subsidiary of State Bank of India and other lenders would loan Saskatchewan-based Karnalyte most of the funds, with GSFC guaranteeing payments in exchange for a greater voting share. Karnalyte plans to make payments from cash flow and eventually issuing more shares.

The mine – to be located in Wynyard, Saskatchewan – would add supply to a struggling industry that has already seen production cuts by Potash Corp of Saskatchewan and others, due to weak crop prices and slack Brazilian demand.

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Labor Protests Multiply in China as Economy Slows, Worrying Leaders – by Javier C. Hernandez (New York Times – March 14, 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/

GUANGZHOU, China — For nearly seven years, Li Wei rose before dawn for his 10-hour shift at the steel plant, returning home each night soaked in sweat, the clank of heavy machinery still ringing in his ears. But last month, the 31-year-old welder stood outside the plant with hundreds of co-workers, picketing against pay cuts and singing patriotic battle hymns.

Within a week, the authorities declared their strike illegal, threatening fines and imprisonment. The police descended on the plant by the hundreds, tearing down signs and ordering the protesters to go back to work. “I’ve sacrificed my life for this company,” Mr. Li told officers as they sought to disperse the workers. “How can you do this?”

As China’s economy slows after more than two decades of breakneck growth, strikes and labor protests have erupted across the country. Factories, mines and other businesses are withholding wages and benefits, laying off staff or shutting down altogether.

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India to investigate cartel activities by iron-ore miners – by Ajoy K Das (MiningWeekly – March 14, 2016)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – India’s Mines Ministry has ordered an investigation into possible cartel activities among merchant iron-ore miners, following the build-up of large stocks as steel producers and pellet manufacturers face supply shortages.

According to an official in the Ministry, mining advisory body Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) had been directed to probe charges of cartel behaviour. An Investigation had started in the eastern Indian coastal province of Odisha.

Several user industries have complained to the Ministry that even as stockpiles across the country had risen to some 125-million tonnes, most merchant miners were not taking any measures to liquidate the stocks at pitheads, while also reducing production in order to keep prices at auctions at a higher level than normal demand-supply dynamics would warrant.

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Iron ore glut seen easing path to China nod for Vale-Fortescue tie-up – by Sonali Paul and Michael Martina (Reuters U.S. – March 10, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE/BEIJING – How times have changed. In 2008, when top global miner BHP Billiton tried to take over iron ore rival Rio Tinto, China raced to snap up a $14 billion stake in Rio, to block the deal and thwart any tightening of iron ore supplies.

Two years later, Chinese regulators helped nix a $116 billion iron ore joint venture between the two giants. Now, faced with an iron ore glut and a struggling steel industry, Beijing is expected to take a kinder view of a proposed tie-up involving the world’s largest iron ore miner, sources say.

Brazil’s Vale and Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group this week announced they are in talks over a joint venture to blend up to 100 million tonnes of their iron ore – about 10 percent of China’s imports of the steel-making ingredient.

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Tensions Rise in E. Cameroon Over Chinese Gold Miners – by Moki Edwin Kindzeka (Voice Of America – March 10, 2016)

http://www.voanews.com/

BETARE OYA, CAMEROON — Tensions are brewing in eastern Cameroon between residents and small-scale Chinese gold miners who began setting up camp there six years ago. Local miners say the Chinese have taken away their livelihoods and are not living up to promises to develop the area.

Local miners began extracting gold around Betare Oya in 2007. Three years later, the Chinese arrived. Miner Emmanuel Manga says he couldn’t compete and had to become a commercial moto driver. He says he now makes barely $60 a month, a quarter of what he used to earn.

He says Cameroon should not allow Chinese to go so far as digging in their gold fields or hiring laborers for very little wages to dig. He says it has made them poor.

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Statistics From China Say Coal Consumption Continues to Drop – by Edward Wong (New York Times – March 4, 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/

BEIJING — China has released new statistics indicating that it used less coal last year than in 2014, lending support to the view that the country, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, may have reached a peak in coal consumption.

That would be a boon for global efforts to limit climate change, since industrial coal burning is the primary source of greenhouse gases. The new data, released on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics, said coal consumption had fallen 3.7 percent in 2015 compared with the previous year. It was the second straight year of decline, according to the bureau, which said coal use had dropped 2.9 percent in 2014.

Much of the world is watching China’s actions on carbon emissions, since it is responsible for about half of the world’s coal consumption. President Xi Jinping has said that China intends for its greenhouse gas emissions to stop growing around 2030. Some climate experts in China say the peak could come earlier, closer to 2025.

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Excerpt from The Remaking Of The Mining Industry – by David Humphreys

To order a copy of The Remaking Of The Mining Industry, click here: http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137442000

David Humphreys was formerly chief economist of the London-based mining company, Rio Tinto, and of Russia’s largest mining company, Norkilsk Nickel. Prior to entering the mining industry, he worked in UK government service as an advisor on minerals policy. He has lectured and published widely on the economic of the mining industry.

China Changes Everything: China and the rest of the emerging world

China’s rapid industrialisation in the first decade of the twenty-first century fitted into a broader narrative about how the balance of the global economy was shifting towards emerging market economies.

Strong growth in China and in other emerging economies over many years meant that the historical dominance of the global economy by the advanced Western economies was being eroded. As Figure 2.4 illustrates, through the 1980s and 1990s, global growth was still largely dominated by the advanced economies. In the 2000s, growth rates (based on PPPs) moved higher and growth was dominated by the emerging economies. According to the IMF, the emerging markets’ share of global GDP, which was 37 per cent in 2000, crossed the 50 per cent mark in 2013.

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Khan Resources asks Ottawa to stop Mongolian aid pending settlement for mine given to Russians – by Lee Berthiaume (Financial Post – March 3, 2016)

http://business.financialpost.com/

OTTAWA — A Canadian mining company wants the federal government to suspend millions of dollars in foreign aid to Mongolia until the Asian country pays for taking the firm’s uranium mine and giving it to the Russians.

The request, made Tuesday, comes exactly one year after a trade tribunal told Mongolia to give Toronto-based Khan Resources Inc. more than $100 million in compensation for the lost uranium mine, and is the latest gambit in a long-running dispute sparked by Cold War-era geopolitics.

It also coincides with a major mining convention in Toronto next week, where Mongolian officials plan to pitch their country as a great place for mining companies from Canada and the rest of the world to invest.

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Protectionism overstated as threat to China steel exports – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – March 2, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, AUSTRALIA – One of the big questions surrounding China’s embattled steel sector is whether it can continue to ramp up exports or will protectionism around the globe curb one of the few bright spots for mills in the world’s largest producer.

The current market consensus would seem to be leaning toward the view that China will battle to increase steel exports, and may experience declines as more countries put import taxes and other measures in place to protect their domestic industries from the Chinese juggernaut.

So far, India, the United States and Indonesia have imposed some increased duties on steel imports from China, and measures are under consideration in other jurisdictions, including the European Union (EU) and Australia.

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Saskatchewan ranked best mining jurisdiction in Canada, second best in the world – by Peter Koven (Financial Post – March 1, 2016)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Western Australia is the best mining jurisdiction in the world, while Saskatchewan is a close second.

That is the conclusion of Canada’s Fraser Institute, which is released its annual Survey of Mining Companies on Tuesday. The survey, which collects feedback from hundreds of mining professionals, tries to measure how resource potential and government policy affect mining investment in 109 countries.

Not surprisingly, the study found that Canada, Australia and the United States are all viewed as very attractive places to invest. States and provinces in those countries made up eight of the top 10 jurisdictions in the rankings, with Ireland and Finland filling the other spots.

Ken Green, senior director of natural resource studies at the free-market-oriented Fraser Institute, noted that mining companies invest over the long term and are looking for stable fiscal and political regimes.

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Fraser Institute News Release: Australia top spot for mining investment; Nevada and Alaska ranked best in U.S. [Saskatchewan and Quebec first/second in Canada]

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/

Click here for the mining survey: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/survey-of-mining-companies-2015.pdf

TORONTO—Australia is the world’s most attractive region for mining investment, according to an annual global survey of mining executives released today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian policy think-tank.

“Despite a global downturn of commodity prices, governments worldwide can offer competitive, transparent, and stable mining policies to encourage exploration and investment,” said Kenneth Green, Fraser Institute senior director of energy and natural resources and director of the Fraser Institute Survey of Mining Companies, 2015.

The annual survey rates 109 jurisdictions around the world based on geologic attractiveness and the extent government policies encourage or deter exploration and investment.

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