Asia Mining

http://www.business-standard.com/ [India]

 Canada and Australia spend maximum on mineral exploration with 19% and 12% respectively of global share

Despite being a mineral rich country, India’s share in global exploration budget has been less than 0.5% which might explain the fact the country’s proven reserves are only 5-10% of the total resources.

Canada and Australia are the top countries who spend maximum on mineral exploration with 19% and 12% respectively of the global share.

Exploration of minerals, except petroleum, has been primarily constrained by funding crunch, which is why unproven resources in India are more than twice the proven reserves.

For instance, India has gold resources of 490 million tonnes but only 17% of it has been explored and marked as reserves. Similarly for coal, out of total resources of 280 billion tonne, 40% are available as reserves and for iron ore with 25 billion resources, 28% are reserves. India produces about 87 minerals.

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http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/

(Andy Home is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

LONDON, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Tin has been the best relative performer of the London Metal Exchange (LME) base metals pack so far this year. And it’s a fair bet that analysts are going to pick it again as a likely out-performer next year when the annual polls are compiled.

Against a backdrop of improving metals demand, relative price performance is increasingly a reflection of each metal’s supply dynamics. Which is why tin’s bull credentials are unarguably the strongest of the lot.

THE BULL CASE

This is a market still characterised by structural supply shortfall, unlike, say copper, where heavy investment in new mine capacity is finally closing the gap with demand.

There has been no such investment splurge in tin. Nor is there likely to be any time soon.  The bull case was recently spelt out by Peter Kettle, markets manager for tin industry association ITRI.

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 http://www.bloomberg.com/

In many ways Mongolia is an outlier — an exotic tourist destination filled with windswept deserts, nomads and yurts. It might also be a vision of the world’s future.

With a tiny $10 billion economy and less than 3 million people, Mongolia is fantastically resource-rich. And with borders touching China, Russia and Central Asia, the landlocked nation seems to have won a geographic lottery ticket. It doesn’t need to go far to find enthusiastic customers for its immense endowment of copper, gold and other minerals.

That also means that Mongolia sits on the precipice of the so-called resources curse, in which citizens in countries such as Nigeria and Indonesia have not prospered from the treasure sitting under their land and seas. As politicians and cronies make millions, there’s little incentive to create other industries to employ the masses.

Mongolia’s challenge will soon be the world’s. That’s the upshot of a new report from Richard Dobbs and his team at McKinsey, in which they predict a $17 trillion investment bonanza by 2030 to keep up with demand for oil, gas and other materials. That’s an amount greater than the annual output of the U.S. economy and more than four times Germany’s. It’s not just the kind of money that changes people or even nations. It’s the kind that changes the world — and probably not for the better.

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http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/

Indonesia’s vast natural resource wealth has been the backbone of its economic growth for years. It started with the oil bonanza in 1970-1980s, followed by timber and forest extraction in the 1980-1990s, mining spree in the 2000s and palm oil windfall in the last 10 years.

Such diversity of valuable resources if managed under prudent governance would indeed be a viable driver to propel the country to prosperity. However, as in any third world country, Indonesia is also plagued with the “resource curse” or the paradox of plenty that the resource-rich countries have less economic growth compared with countries which have less natural resources.

The country has failed to capitalise on the abundance of resource wealth to spur sustained economic growth due to poor governance and mismanagement. As a result, the contribution of natural resource development to the country’s economic growth has been disproportionately minimal.

A number of studies show that Indonesia is one of the most resourceful countries in term of mining potential and cultivation land. However, its resource mismanagement and poor governance regime have failed to make the country attractive for investment and instead choked the otherwise effective engine for the economic growth.

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http://www.philstar.com/

Talk about fair-weather friend. “As hundreds of thousands of Filipinos struggled to find food, water, shelter and the bodies of loved ones in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, China quickly dipped into its world-leading $3.7 trillion of currency reserves and came up with … all of $100,000.” That Bloomberg news lead captured the general recoil at how the world’s second-largest economy treats an Asian neighbor. Other headlines stated “cheapskate,” “paltry,” “miserly” and, in one mainland-Chinese daily, “ungenerous.”

Beijing could not have missed the effects of history’s strongest ever typhoon to make landfall. Global networks had tracked Haiyan’s ruin of the Philippines, where three-fourths of families have Chinese blood. Undeterred by Philippine mountain ranges, the storm crossed over the sea to hit China. One drowned and seven went missing in Hainan, and many areas were flooded in Guangxi provinces. Beijing came upon a chance to show amity and soft power. Yet it chose to be petty, due to sea disputes with Manila. With trade overshooting $36 billion in 2012, China often calls the Philippines “partner.”

In the first hours of Filipinos’ distress, the world sprang to the rescue. The US rushed in an aircraft carrier group laden with emergency crews and $20-million relief. Britain, Japan, and Korea sent trucks, food, and cash of, in turn, $16 million, $10 million, and $5 million. Donations poured in from Australia, $28 million; European Union, $17 million; Vatican, $4 million; Indonesia, $2 million; and Taiwan, which China labels its province, $200,000.

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