After mining companies have picked up in the state recently, mining operation has extracted about 7.31 million tons of iron ore by the companies from September 2015 till date. Mining has now started to gain its base in the state slowly. During this time government has earned around Rs 88.42 crore as royalty from e-auctioned and freshly mined iron ore. Sources said that this chunk of the royalty was from e-auctioned ore. Here is the report of the present process of mining in the state.
[su_expand more_text=”READ MORE” less_text=” ” height=”0″ hide_less=”yes” link_style=”button” link_align=”center”] It has revealed that most of these mining activities started post-March 2016 after mining companies resumed its activities. At present, main leaseholders such as Vedanta, Sociedade De Fomento, Bandekar Bros, V D Chowgule, V M Salgaoncar are engaged in mining. As per DMG source companies are looking to increase production after the coming monsoon.
Iron ore exports have increased with companies exporting the e-auctioned ore in the international market, even as 5.65 million ton of iron ore remains to be auctioned by the DMG.
The outputs by DMG indicates 36 percent capacity utilization of the Iron ore while, Goa’s annual extraction limit set by the Supreme Court is 20 million ton.
Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar gave the green signal to a mining operation in the state and the permission to restart mining was received in March 2015.
This approval took time as to get permission from Bureau of Mines and various other clearances and mining restarted only after September 2015 and a major leaseholder opened up two of its mines.
According to DMG sources, Mining by remaining leaseholders began around February 2016.
The government is now eager to start with mining completely so that all the stakeholders and allied industries are fully engaged in the industry which was stuck for many years.
Initiative steps have been taken to revive industries including rationalization of taxes in the Goa budget 2016-17. Support has also being given from the Centre by slashing export duty on low-grade ore to zero per cent from 10 per cent. The altered MMDR Act is also encouraging the local mining.
The present ‘hurdles’ to mining are divided as the 15 percent royalty rate, the 10 percent contribution to the Goa Permanent Fund and the 15 per cent contribution to the District Development Fund.
Presently, International prices of iron ore that had been in a freefall and had plunged to the US $25 per ton have improved somewhat and are at the US $50 per ton. An official in a mining company said that at these rates to exports are unviable. At its max, the industry exported 54 million ton of ore.
Source: NT
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