In the morning of September 23rd, 2017, keynote session on the theme of CHINA MINING Congress and Expo 2017 was held at Meijing Convention and Exhibition Center of Tianjin. Industry leaders and economists gave speeches concerning the theme “Promoting Mining Prosperity under the Silk Road Spirit”. Mr. Michael Stanley, Global Lead, Extractives Sector, Energy and Extractives Global Practice, the World Bank, was delivering a speech: Leveraging the Mining Industry for Broader Economic Development. (Photo: Hou Yijun Editor: Xu Xiaojing)
Thank you, Mr. Vine Minister!
I’m very glad to come back and give a speech on behalf of the World Bank. We became strategic partners when CHINA MINING Congress and Expo established. I’m very happy to meet so many old friends here.
This morning, we mentioned mining investment can help many aspects achieve development. I want to thank the previous speaker for mentioning “the Belt and Road” spirit because “The Belt and Road” is a very good platform. The World Bank also did a good job in mining investment by providing debt for governments to promote mining development.
As we can see, the World Bank provided capital for governments to improve their service and supports in mining industry. The World Bank, with international financing institutions and companies provided capital including private equity for governments to improve their performance in environment so that enterprises can participate in the mining exploitation.
We can see the whole bank team including the public and private ones provide much supports, so we are not fighting alone, but work closely with our partners, including Asian Development Bank, Africa Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and United Nations, etc.
Recently, we are happy to cooperate with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. It’s actually our common efforts that help improve the environment performance. Our partners also include OECD countries, so we are trying to join hands with different organizations and governments to give you support in achieving your goals.
At the same time, we provide technical consulting services or technical resources services. To strengthen the implementation of government policies and regulations, we are cooperating with relevant departments and research institutions to provide techinical consultations and improve our transparency. I will talk about this aspect later.
Governments see mining investment and investment in oil and gas as an important source of income. It is hoped that our efforts can enable the mining industry to make contributions to shaking off poverty and reducing the poverty figures to 3%. At the same time, we hope more people working in the mining field can get higher imcome. Now we can create many job opportunities in the mining industry. We need to recognize the relation between mining and economic development for a long term to provide more products for small and medium-sized enterprises. In this way, the industry chain can be formed.
Mining is an important field in many countires. Here you can see a map for the year 2007 (see PPT). We can see mining play a very important role in the growth of global income, though every country has a difficult situation. However, the net contribution of mining to economies is increasing. To better understand the information on the map, we need to know every country has a different situation in terms of quantities, qualities and varieties of mines. More importantly, we can see from the map the management environment of mining. Commercial enterprises can make effective investment. Here you can see good information. Foreign investors can obtain better information and better investment.
The PPT shows the outcome analyzed by the World Bank. We can see five countries with rich mining resources. We hope to promote mining development and the relation between mining and socia-economic development. If marking mining on the map, we can see how mining can improve the country’s ability of improving human’s development, so we can get a conclusion that mining is very important and the big mining field will become a better field, because it is different from many other mining products. This country can recover very well, achieving continuous development in terms of different mining products, including industrial goods and building products.
The second aspect is the financial management of mining. Governments are strengthening the auditing, so they can better collect taxes. The World Bank is an important support for the industry to become more transparent. We have another organization called EITI that support the mining exploitation. Not only taxes collected by governments, but better management of taxes can ensure mining taxes can better support development of the mining industry and community so as to help governments make better plans.
Thirdly, the mining industry can promote human’s development by boosting the economy. It can provide good technologies for the remote areas, make contributions to the transfer of technologies in many regions, especially in the remote rural areas. We hope some small programs can improve people’s awareness in terms of sanitation, health and safety.
Fourthly, linking to “The Belt and Road”, which is very important for the economic development. It means we must build good infrastructure. PPP model in many countries means using public private partnership to build infrastrucure. There is another good program which is called mining energy, which means mining can produce electricity for itself and benefit the community.
The last point is also very important. There are some initiatives or obligatory programs in some conmmunities. Mining companies should be made sure that they can exert a positive influence on local governments, so local governments will make full use of this advantage to benefit local people. This is an important part of our mining development, which can benefit local communities.
Mining countries along the Belt and Road may ask what we need to do to enter into these countries. Firstly, we need use the economic relations to build partnership, which can not be produced by force, because these mining companies need to have powerful partnership. Secondly, we need to balance our infrastructure construction, which are needed by mining companies. To improve their infrastructures, we need better roads, electricity, hydrosystems and social infrastructures, such as education, health and community. More and more regional cooperation require us to pay more attention to our resource channels, which may reach one country and even more. Our infrastructures need to connect these mining fields. This is a very important point. Moreover, companies need to keep a work certificate to allow them to exploit mines. Therefore, a powerful community is very important for them.
In terms of donators, we hope they can have powerful, effective and competitive management, which can improve the mining products. We really support this help, which we hope can bring more taxes and governments can understand these taxes. We hope to have a transparent income management system and governments can have a budget method to resist the economic flunctuation. It can take us several hours to talk about the bad effects of mining, but resources is a double-edged sword. We have to make good use of it to avoid it becoming a curse.
My colleagues in National Development and Reform Commission also mentioned “The Belt and Road Initiative” is very important now, especially in infrastructure. We need to combine the mining industry with other activities, which can be related to water or agriculture. We can make a powerful and integrated geograhical plan which is target at minng. We need a powerful and integrated GeoPlanning targeted our mining. Today, the decisions made by a country may influence the life of later generations. There is no doubt that we need very good plans. Our mining should produce less carbon emission and we should use recyclable energy. We need to reduce the effect of mining on our environment and improve our efficiency. We should use pay attention on the management measures of our government. Some countries are lack of water resource, so they need to use water resources more efficiently.
I would like to show you an example, Papua New Guinea, a country which has cooperated with the World Bank for a long time. Within ten years, our bank provide them with some technologies. We also help them build a government supervision system. We need to achieve three goals: financial stability, social stability and the sustainability of economy and environment. That is, the sustainability of finance, environment and mining.
Now, Papua New Guinea has achieved huge growth in terms of export. Its world market is expanding because their government has conducted effective management. Their mining brought one third taxes for the government. As many as 123 thousand people are employed in the mining industry. For a country with a small poplulation, 123 thousand is a huge number. Banks and other participants pay much attention to this aspect, especially the development of small-scale mining, so this is an outcome of cooperation.
In terms of sustainable development, Papua New Guinea has learned a very important lesson is the past ten years. Half of the communities’ participation in the plans and decisions may not represent the interests of all the people, so we deliver our thoughts to all the communities and ask them to pay attention to environment, women and even children and the effects of mining on them, so we will focus on those people. Some jobs are created for women, We included them into the mining system and made them become a part of the decision system. Without the participation of the community, the cause of mining can not achieve success.
People working in Papua New Guinea will appreciate a story about environment improvement. Our bank has working with other partners to promote their environment policies making, including some plans and policies influenced by the environment. We will also help them recover the environment after mining exploitation. The problem we considered to start with is what changes the environment will have after closing mines. We will make early plans to make preparations before closing mines. Some communities have to move away these areas, so we must protect their interests in the process of mining development. Governments made some immigrant and resettlement policies which will benefit them. At the same time, we will pay attention to health and safety rules and the implementation of these rules. Because now there are many small mines, we are paying more attention to mercury and gold and their effects on the environment and the effects of improving mines, especially small mines. You also expect us to provide some data which can show the achievements we hope to make. The World Bank provide some infrastructure in over 50 countries. As you can see, we support the environmental, social and financial sustainability. At the same time, we provide some capital in some specific programs, such as gender programs. We support the transparency of this industry, which is the outcome of the global efforts. We support the payment transparency.
Because of “The Belt and Road Initiative”, I believed these emerging countries will attach more importance to mining management through bilateral or multilateral ways of cooperation, such as the World Bank, which is very important, because our mining resources can create economic prosperity. The prosperity and growth of communities and countries are achieved through the development of the mining industry. All the people can get benefit from it. Donor countries have rich experiences in this aspect.
Thank you for listening to my speech.
Source: www.mlr.gov.cn Citation: www.mlr.gov.cn
About CHINA MINING
Since first held in 1999, the scope and influence of CHINA MINING has grown rapidly year by year. As a global mining summit forum and exhibition, CHINA MINING Congress and Expo has become one of the world’s top mining events, and one of the world’s largest mining exploration, development and trading platforms, covering all aspects of the whole mining industry chain, including geological survey, exploration and development, mining rights trading, mining investment and financing, smelting and processing, mining techniques and equipment, mining services, etc. playing an active promotion role in creating exchange opportunities and enhancing mutual cooperation between domestic and foreign mining enterprises.
CHINA MINING Congress and Expo 2017 will be held at Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Center in Tianjin in September 23-25, 2017. We invite you to join the event and to celebrate the 19th anniversary of CHINA MINING with us. For more information about CHINA MINING 2017, please visit: www.chinaminingtj.org.
