KAGAYANon.net, Cagayan de Oro City Forum

[chunsa]

US economic crisis poses challenges for Philippine miners
Credits: The Manila Times


Philippine mining officials on Friday expressed concern that the US financial crisis could affect funding as the country ramps up its mining activities.

“With the challenge facing financial institutions now, the access to capital to finance a project will certainly be more challenging,” said Filipino mining executive Benjamin Philip Romualdez, head of the Association of Southeast Asian Federation of Mining Associations.

“There will be some revision to risk financing among institutions. Generally speaking, a reevaluation of the risk profile of countries like the Philippines will be part of it,” he told a news conference.

Romualdez, whose own company Benguet Corp. is in the early stages of several high-profile projects, said the local mining industry is hoping “this will be a short-term thing and as the dust starts to settle there will be a repositioning where mining projects will still be projects that should merit consideration in project finance.”

Minerals-rich Philippines, which has seen export growth plunge this year as electronics demand softened, is aggressively promoting mining investments to develop its copper, gold, chromite and nickel potential to take advantage of still buoyant metals prices.

The government approved 40 mining processing and exploration projects with a total $1.4 billion in investments from 2004 to end-2007, and expects potential additional investments of another $9 billion between 2008 and 2011.

Artemio Disini, chairman of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, said despite the trend of risk-aversion toward emerging markets as the sub-prime mortgage-lending crisis played out in the United States and elsewhere, mining remained a bright spot.

Foreign and local mining firms that invested heavily in projects over the past three years “are going to reap the benefits of the still relatively high prices of copper and nickel,” Disini added.

“There are many bright spots still in the industry,” he said, adding that companies such as Atlas Consolidated Mining, which produces copper at a newly reopened mine in central Philippines, are “ramping up” production despite the global financial seizure.

“They took the risk of starting it, and even at today’s prices they will still be making a lot of money,” Disini said.

The Philippines is hosting an Asia-Pacific mining conference on October 14 to 16 to drum up foreign investor interest in the sector.
--AFP

[bratz]

USA is currently in mild recession today. It is only SOME not all private financial banking companies are failing due to banking deregulations, corruption of CEO, mismanagement, politics rolled into one. However, other private companies are in good shape like the High Tech industries, stores, agriculture etc.etc.

The US Federal Govt. is helping this failing lending institutions to keep the economy going. The Govt. will now REGULATE the banks to stop the corruption & mismanagement that caused the failures of this banks. They are now forming 2 oversight committees to check the behaviors of this banks regarding their lending practices. They will start reporting to Congress & to the Treasury Dept.Committee regularly about their loan practices, earnings, everything related to their companies business.

So....right now, banking companies with the supervision of the US Federal Govt. , will be very strick in approving loans & credits to its customers, domestic and abroad.
Foreign countries like Philippines can still borrow or seek aid from USA but they will be scrutinized as to how they can pay their loans back.

Because USA is the largest economy in the world, it has a big effect on other countries that do business with America. This failing banks has branches all over the world.. Banks like Lehman Brothers that failed has a branch in Germany that also failed, therefore they have to shut down the office & laid off their German employees overseas. This has an effect also to the German Economy because these Germans lost their jobs.

Lastly, in General, life goes on as usual for Americans. The Commercial Banks where we deposit our money is SAFE because it is insured by the US Federal Govt.Insurance Corporation.

[goma]

How does this affect ordinary citizens? What are things that need to be done so as not to get too much worries? You see, I seem to lack knowledge about the economic thing and what sorts of things is currently going on. As a normal citizen, what can I do to save myself and rather my family? How do I deal with this crisis?

[chunsa]

actually goms, one cdo economist said we (as in CdeO) are not totally affected as of now...
although we may be moderately affected for next year (mga 1st quarter of 2009) but like he
said, moderate lang daw.... pero we still have to watch out sad...