By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: Union Mines Secretary while addressing the 5th National Conclave on Mines and Minerals 2021, in New Delhi, on Tuesday highlighted how recent amendments in mining laws , have helped to ease process of auctions of mineral blocks across all mineral bearing States of the Country.Sanjay Lohiya, Additional Secretary , Ministry of Mines, addressed the technical session.
Union Minister of Coal, Mines and Parliamentary Affairs Shri Pralhad Joshi was also addressing the National Conclave . Various stakeholders of the mining sector from across the country were participating in the conclave and holding strategic discussions on key issues and opportunities in the mining sector to bring in higher growth and facilitate the ‘Ease of Doing Business’.
Further, 52 potential mineral blocks carved out of G4 stage mineral investigations will be handed over to the State Governments during the conclave. The blocks are located across fifteen States including two blocks of North Eastern (NER) States, six of Chattisgarh, eight blocks in Madhya Pradesh and six blocks in Maharashtra. These comprise many minerals and deposits for supporting various industries such as 8 limestone blocks, 8 gold blocks, 8 iron ore blocks among other minerals. Auctioning of these blocks, along with the 100 blocks recently handed over in September this year will further strengthen the mineral economy of the country.
The Central and State Governments have been working in coordination to further strengthen the auction regime, and to identify more and more mineral blocks for auction to increase domestic mineral production. The Conclave will provide unique opportunity to the State Governments to showcase their auctionable mineral blocks with regard to its exploration, mineral resources, transport connectivity from mineral block, policy scenario in State and incentives to attract prospective investors. It will also provide the right opportunity to investors to identify the mineral blocks and participate in the auction.
The PSUs which are closely associated with the mining activity directly or as an integral part of their production process, would be one of the major stakeholders assisting the Ministry in organizing the conclave. These PSUs are HCL, NALCO, & MECL under the Ministry of Mines and the companies in which the government stake is under the administrative control of the Ministry of Mines, viz. HZL & BALCO.
