The Government of India has recently launched the National Mineral Exploration Policy (NMEP) for Non Coal and Non Fuel minerals. The NMEP spells out the strategy and outlines the action plan of the government to ensure systematic, state of the art comprehensive exploration of Indias mineral resources.
The NMEP also
proposes to involve private sector participation
for unraveling new mineral deposits through state of the art technology. The government proposes to facilitate and
incentivize private sector participation in Mineral Exploration so that the
technical expertise ,technological capability and financial resources of the
private sector can be gainfully utilized in the discovery and exploitation of
mineral resources.
NMEP envisages
providing of free geo-scientific data on geology ,geochemistry and geophysics
to the public by the government thereby creating a platform for private sector
government collaboration for the discovery of new mineral deposits which can be
put up for auction..
Since all our near
surface deposits have been explored and are already under exploitation, one of the major
thrust areas of the NMEP would be to attract global participation to discover
concealed and deep seated mineral
deposits of diamond ,gold, PGE, Nickel etc (300 to 1000m) having
no surface manifestations and requiring specialized knowledge and state
of the art technology. For this purpose the government also proposes to set up
the National Centre for Mineral Targeting on Public Private Partnership to
focus on optimizing mineral exploration efforts of the public and private
sector
The Government will
develop model contracting procedures and standard agreement templates for State
Govts to engage private sector expertise. Govt will keep provision for
mitigating risks of the private companies in carrying out mineral exploration
by working normative cost of exploration works for different minerals so that
exploration companies could be compensated in case they do not discover any
mineable reserves.
The NMEP is a positive step on the part of the Government to encourage and involve private sector participation to discover mineral deposits. Effective and whole hearted implementation will be the key to its success or otherwise it will remain just another policy of the government.
