30 Years of Mining Plunder: A Comprador Capture of the Philippines

By MARCO SEBASTIAN TUERES

For three decades, the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 has served as the legal framework for a systematic looting of our nation’s mineral resources, enriching a cabal of compradors, oligarchs, bureaucrat capitalists, and their foreign partners. This neoliberal law has enabled the unbridled extraction of our wealth – leaving behind a legacy of environmental devastation, social injustice, and economic exploitation. Compradors, acting as local agents for foreign corporations, have facilitated the entry of transnational mining companies, ensuring their access to our mineral resources at the expense of the Filipino people.

Oligarchs wielding vast political and economic influence have exploited the Mining Act to expand their empires, amassing immense fortunes at the expense of displaced communities, polluted water sources, and deforested landscapes. Enabled by bureaucrat capitalists—corrupt officials who manipulate regulations, grant permits, and overlook environmental violations for personal gain—these mining operations thrive with little accountability. The cozy ties between politicians and mining companies are evident, with figures like Senator Francis Tolentino, former DND Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., and House Speaker Martin Romualdez having direct or indirect stakes in the industry.

Foreign partners, driven by the insatiable pursuit of profit, have been the primary beneficiaries of this mining plunder. Companies from countries like Canada, Australia, China, and the United Kingdom have extracted vast quantities of minerals from our land, leaving behind environmental devastation and social disruption.

The economic benefits of this mining liberalization have been grossly overstated. While the mining industry has generated billions of dollars in revenue, only a small fraction has trickled down to the Filipino people. From 2020 to 2023, taxes and shares from the mining industry amounted to only 16% of the total production value. For every P100 extracted from our resources, only P16 has been returned to the government.

The Marcos administration’s recent efforts to “rationalize” the mining fiscal regime are nothing more than a smokescreen for further enriching the elite. Given the Marcos family’s history of plundering the nation’s resources and their close ties to the mining industry, any attempt to make mining “easier” must be viewed with extreme skepticism.

After 30 years of plunder under the Mining Act of 1995, it is clear that this law has failed the Filipino people. It has enriched a small elite while leaving behind a legacy of environmental destruction, social injustice, and economic exploitation. It is time to scrap this law and replace it with a truly pro-people, pro-environment framework for managing our mineral resources, one that prioritizes the well-being of our communities and the protection of our ecosystems.

*The author is the Environmental Human Rights and Development (EHRD) Advocacy Officer for Kalikasan PNE, a national environmental campaign center in the Philippines. He works on advancing environmental justice, defending the rights of communities affected by ecological destruction, and advocating for policy reforms to protect the environment and human rights.

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