MMDR Amendment – Rejuvenating India’s Mineral Exploration and Mining Opportunities and Challenges

Mr Biplob Chatterjee, CEO & Director Consulting, Geovale Services, presented a well-researched and thought provocative paper on MMDR Amendment Rejuvenating India’s Mineral Exploration and Mining Opportunities and Challenges in the Mining Mazma 2015 Conference organized by FIMI (Federation of Indian Mineral Industries) in Bangalore. The presentation was highly appreciated by the audience.

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Mr Biplob Chatterjee presenting his paper at the Mining Mazma, 2015 Conference

Mr Chatterjee pointed out that there has been no mineral discovery since 1982, which has made into a major mine. In the last three decades, at today’s money value, government spending in survey and exploration through central and state agencies have been approximately INR 60,000 Crores – that’s about 10 billion dollars in 30 years. However, in India – with 7% continental landmass and 15% population of the world, this is only 0.5% of global exploration dollars.

A matured mining jurisdiction has a balanced statutory control over permitting to mining processes. However, one hand Justice M.B. Shah pointed out too little statutory control during the exploitation process, Ex CAG Vinod Rai and the Supreme Court pointed out extremely high and discretionary bureaucratic controls during the permitting stages of the previous regime.

The Supreme Court’s direction to auction mineral blocks, Mr Chatterjee described the pros and cons of the auction process. He pointed out the differences between auctioning coal blocks and other mineral blocks and the reasons why many states have been struggling to get exploration blocks into auction.

He has also thrown up some logical ideas to test auction processes for exploration blocks and suggested the investors how to realize the full value potential of the assets won by them.

A copy of this presentation can be downloaded here.