The Federal Executive Council, FEC, on Wednesday, August 31, announced a new road map for the mining and mineral sector to boost its contribution to the country’s GDP.
This is coming four years after the federal government announced a roadmap for the development of the solid mineral sector.
Minister of Solid Minerals, Dr Kayode Fayemi, who gave a fuller details said the road map would lead to job creation in the mining industry and would also in the next 10 years contribute five per cent of the GDP.
He said: ”FEC approved the roadmap for the growth and development of the mining industry. What the roadmap seeks to do is to grow the contribution of minning to the GDP. On the back of the president’s vision to diversify the economy. It is to build on old roadmap of 2012.
“What distinguishes this roadmap is its determination to build a regulatory agency – an independent regulatory agency in the minning sector. Stakeholders have been insisting that the ministry should not also be the regulator of the industry.
“We will now have minining cadastral zonal offices which will issue the licenses together with the minning inspecting directorate, minning environment compliance unit as well as the neutical minning units.
“These are directorate within the ministry but will form part of the independent regulatory agency.” Fayemi said the new roadmap also addressed the critical issue of partnership with states.
According to him, one of the challenges in minning is the tension between the federal government and the states.
He said: “The federal government owns the minerals but the states government own the land.
“Without a robust partnership between the two critical components of minning you are not going to make any headway.”
He said minning had not been thriving because of the tension between the federal government and states. To address this problem, he said minning cadastrail and zonal offices would also be created in the states.
The minister said: “In line with global standard, the roadmap is also to change the name of the ministry from Ministry of Solid Mineral Development to Ministry of Mines and Steel Development , which is what obtains across the board.”
He explained that the roadmap would also To make it easier for foreign direct investment into the country and that government would also improve on geo-science data gathering.
