KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – In a bid to ease doing business in the mining sector, the Indian government has approved a “single window” bundled clearance of all mandatory approvals for 288 mining leases that are slated to expire in 2020.
Government officials said that new lease holders of these mines would not need to make applications for environment and forest clearances, separately, and that the Environment and Forest Ministry would shortly be issuing orders for all clearances to be issued as a “single package” to prospective bidders of new leases.
The government has set a deadline of April 2019 for completion of fresh exploration of the 288 leasehold areas so that fresh auction of leases for these mines can be completed well before their expiry in 2020.
The offer of single window mandatory clearance is also aimed at avoiding any kind of disruptions in operations as 59 of the 288 mines are functioning projects, the government officials added.
The Mines Ministry is also looking into a steel industry petition seeking that mandatory G2 level of exploration be eased in the case of the 288 mining assets as it could delay the process of fresh auction of leases.
Last year, the government, while ordering fresh exploration of these mines, had added a corollary that fresh auctions would be held only for mining assets where G2 level of exploration had been completed, but it was now considering the option of making G1 level of exploration mandatory before allocating new leases.
Although not officially stated, sources indicate that the push towards increasing the ease of doing business in the mining sector was prompted by concern over a slowdown in auctioning of noncoal mineral assets over the past years.
Government data show that since auction was made the mandatory route for allocation of mineral assets in 2015, of the 78 noncoal mineral blocks identified for allocation only 41 had been completed through auctions.
The highest number of mineral blocks successfully auctioned was in 2016/17 when 15 were allocated. In the current financial year, 14 blocks have been auctioned by provincial governments and notice inviting tenders have been issued for another 22.
Mining industry sources said that the prime reasons for the slowdown in allocation was investors’ concern over inevitable delays in securing mandatory forest and environmental approvals and the stipulation that G2 level exploration be mandatory before any mineral asset is put up for auction.