Albay 2nd District Representative Joey Sarte Salceda calls on House Speaker Lord Allan Jay Velasco and Majority Leader Ferdinand Martin Romualdez to expedite the approval of House Bill No. 6135, “in view of the critical importance of the natural resource trust fund it creates, which could serve as a model for other resource-intensive and resource-seeking industries in the country as well as the opportunities it creates in this global period of higher prices for extracted resources.”
In a policy outline titled, “The Future in Nickel”, Salceda recently underscored the potential of nickel to the country’s economy.
He explained that there are two factors that could help maximize the benefits of the product. Among these are a trust fund that taxes the sector when global prices are high, and domestic industries that use up the minerals for higher-value exports during periods of low mineral prices.
“The problem with the current Philippine mining sector is it exports most of its production, instead of linking it with the domestic manufacturing sector, and we do not keep its windfall profits for the future. The result is mining communities remain poor because the attribution of benefits is not direct, while the economy does not get to maximize value-added,” Salceda said.
Salceda added, “The world will always need mining because there is no digital economy without mining. Every essential part of the digital economy, from data storage to transmission to data generation, uses mineral products. Mining is an essential ingredient to the future.”
“No one will understand this better than the House leadership, because the Speaker is a champion for compensating mining communities better as Marinduque’s congressman, and the Majority Leader is one of the pioneers for value-added in the metallic sector, through the Leyte Ecological and Industrial Zone,” the congressman shared.
Nickel is used as a key input for electric vehicles. As the second largest producer of nickel in Asia, Philippines could open around 1.3 million jobs in ten years due to the product.