Corruption and red tape keep out substantial foreign investment into mining industry

Sri Lanka had failed to attract substantial foreign investment in the mining industry during the last 50 years mainly due to the high sovereign risks associated with Sri Lanka, Chirantha Weerawardena, a mining engineer, said during a seminar, titled ‘Blueprint for Developing a Sustainable Sri Lankan Mining Industry by Attracting Foreign Investment,’ organised by the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka (IESL) recently.

Eng. Weerawardena said that mining was a long term investment and investors in the mining sector werevery concerned about the political and economic stability of a country. “They are worried about abrupt changes to mining related law and regulations, significant and abrupt changes to tax and royalty regimes, the lack of rule of law which can result in losing mining rights without valid reasons and the lack of an independent mechanism for appeal or arbitration against the regulator’s or minister’s decisions.”

Eng. Weerawardena said for a mining company exploration is a high risk investment because significant funds need to be spent before hitting an ‘economic deposit.’ Given that mining is an investment spanning 10 to 40 years, once an investment is made, a mining company is “trapped” as it can’t leave easily.

“A few years ago a London Stock Exchange registered company spent about 16 million US dollars to carry out initial exploration of three sites they acquired in Sri Lanka. Then the Geological Survey & Mines Bureau (GSMB) suspended the licence citing an issue with the local ownership requirement of the mining licence holder. In Sri Lanka there is a rule saying an exploration license can be taken by anyone, but the mining licence can be only taken by a company with majority local ownership. The company went to court. I have no problem with this law, but the GSMB should have brought this up at the start. And then the licences were reinstated by the Secretary to the Ministry of Environment under statutory appeal process. Now the issue has been sorted out and the company signed an MOU with the LB group in China – the second largest company in the world in TIO pigment manufacturing, who will invest 81 million dollars to build a mining separation plant at Oluvil,” he said.

That had been one of the two serious investments in the mining sector in the last 50 years, Weerawardena said, adding that the above case demonstrated that Sri Lankan officials and politicians were not interested in facilitating foreign investments and sometimes went of their way to make life difficult for investors. Such actions mainly stem from corruption, especially when they want kickbacks.

Weerawardena said resource nationalism, which was the tendency of people and governments to assert control over natural resources located in their territory, was also tied with sovereign risk. However, resource nationalism is based on several valid and good points and this is not inherently bad.

“However, we must realise politicians and some ‘experts’ sometimes overestimate in-situ value of mineral deposits for various reasons. There is also a widespread anti-mining sentiment among the people as well.

“We have to also be scientific when we estimate the in-situ value of deposits. There are various costs associated with extracting the minerals in the ground. There are ship loading costs, transport costs, processing costs, mining costs, brownfield drilling cost, overheads and amortisation of capital. We have to take these costs into consideration before we value the mineral deposits we have,” he said.

He added that mining is an economic multiplier. In Australia, each mining job creates at least four others in the form of support services.

However, mining can also have a negative impact if a country does not manage its operations properly, he said.

“You can end up degrading a non-renewable resource without much to show. This has happened in Latin American and African countries. Because mining is so profitable, it can lead to corruption and social disharmony among stakeholders and communities. The worst-case scenario is that there can be foreign interference in the country. If we understand both the positives and negatives of mining, the country can go through the correct process to harness the benefits of mining.”

He added that Sri Lanka is a country with high sovereignty risk. Despite opening up the economy in 1977 and although Sri Lanka has several world-class deposits, the country has only got a few mining investments because of this.

“We need to understand that mining companies prefer stable policies. They can’t be lured by promises of cheap minerals. You also need less corruption and red tape. Then mining companies will come to Sri Lanka,” he said. (RK)