Team News Riveting
New Delhi, November 20
The ministry of mines will hand over 52 potential mineral blocks carved out of G4 stage mineral investigations to the State Governments.
The process will be completed at the National Conclave on Mines and Minerals to be held in New Delhi on 23rd of this month. Union Minister of Coal, Mines and Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi will be addressing the conclave to be attended by various stakeholders of the mining sector from across the country to hold strategic discussions on key issues and opportunities in the mining sector to bring in higher growth and facilitate the ‘Ease of Doing Business’.
The blocks are located across fifteen States including two blocks of North Eastern (NER) States, six of Chhattisgarh, eight blocks in Madhya Pradesh and six blocks in Maharashtra. These comprise many minerals and deposits for supporting various industries such as 8 limestone blocks, 8 gold blocks, 8 iron ore blocks among other minerals. Auctioning of these blocks, along with the 100 blocks recently handed over in September this year will further strengthen the mineral economy of the country.
The Centre has recently allowed participation of private parties in exploration by amending the MMDR Act to increase the pace of exploration and to bring in advanced technology in mineral exploration. During the conclave, the Minister will also launch the online portal for accreditation of agencies in mineral sector to enable private exploration entities to accredit themselves through transparent and paperless process. Ministry of Mines has developed an accreditation scheme through QCI-NABET.
Technical sessions will be organized where panel discussions on recent amendment in the mining legislation to ease the process of auction of mineral blocks and on the initiatives taken for mineral exploration in the country as well as utilization of Nation Mineral Exploration Trust (NMET) funding will be held.
The Central and State Governments have been working in coordination to further strengthen the auction regime, and to identify more and more mineral blocks for auction to increase domestic mineral production. The Conclave will provide unique opportunity to the State Governments to showcase their auctionable mineral blocks with regard to its exploration, mineral resources, transport connectivity from mineral block, policy scenario in State and incentives to attract prospective investors. It will also provide the right opportunity to investors to identify the mineral blocks and participate in the auction.
The participation of the industry and other stakeholders in the earlier conclaves was kept free of charge for increased participation and the same will be continued in this conclave also. This would provide an effective platform to various Government organizations of the mining sector, viz. Union Mines Ministry, State Mining Departments, regulators such as IBM & DGMs, explorations entities GSI & NMET, etc. to interact with the mining and allied industry stakeholders.
The PSUs which are closely associated with the mining activity directly or as an integral part of their production process, would be one of the major stakeholders assisting the Ministry in organizing the conclave. These PSUs are HCL, NALCO, and MECL under the Ministry of Mines and the companies in which the government stake is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Mines, viz. HZL & BALCO.
