The forgotten economic potential of new mineral discovery (MiningNewsPremium.net)

4 May 2015 - By: John P Sykes
Posted in: Blog, Exploration, Mineral Economics, Mineral Policy, Mining

There’s a co-authored article with Allan Trench on today’s MiningNewsPremium.net Strictly Boardroom column, entitled “The forgotten economic potential of new mineral discovery“. The article draws from some of our experiences in the past few weeks teaching on the International Mining for Development Centre’s Mineral Policy and Economics course. Quite simply the article reviews how governments often focus on gaining their fair share of mining revenues (to which they are entitled) – dividing up the economic pie; but forget to help grow the economic pie, by promoting the discovery and development of new mines. To build a successful resources economy governments need to balance this paradox, making sure they get their fair share, so that it can be invested in much needed infrastructure and social programmes; but also ensuring they grow the resources sector, so they can continue and grow their investments in the infrastructure and social programmes. The article is available to subscribers online.