Table of Contents
Gambling with resource exploration
- Increasing the money available for fiscal spending without increasing taxes or borrowing
- Imagine if a government took ₹450 crore of tax revenue and spent it at the world’s casinos and won.
- Given the odds at a casino, this would seem improbable and probably reckless.
- Exploring the earth for economically viable (high-grade) mineral deposits is a complex & high risk improbable activity.
- It has not had a win against the odds.
- Searching for a needle in a haystack
- Over the long term, the return on investment on exploration on average across the world is very poor.
- 2015: The Indian government created the National Mineral Exploration Trust Fund
- Worth: ₹450 crore approximately
- This money is designated for exploration.
- The money has been allocated to the state mineral resources departments who have no record of exploration success.
- So, what do clever countries do? They don’t gamble, they act as the casino and entice gamblers, generally small junior exploration companies, to spend global capital in their country.
- However, for this to work, the host government has to tolerate a few jackpot winners.
- But just like a casino, these jackpots are smaller than the total sum of failed exploration projects.
- In the last couple of years, GoI has introduced auctions to transparently enable explorers and miners to be allocated land to explore or gamble with.
- The Indian government has also publicly made available online geophysical survey data.
- While the policy seeks to encourage private sector exploration, the fine print of the law in practice is very different.
- Existing mining law provides that any discoveries (winnings) made by an explorer will be handed back to the government and the government will reimburse the explorer for the funds they expended.
- Annual licenses: dropped from 360 a couple of years ago to only 21 in the last 12 months
- Actual work has been undertaken has dropped from 156 to 5 in the same period.
- The reality is extraction technology improvements and substitution overcome scarcity of material such that the real price of minerals declines on average, year by year.
- India needs to rethink how it apportions risks and rewards, and brings in the private sector not as a subordinate contract follower but as a capital risk taking wildcatter.
PMO
- Launch of the Centre for the 4 th Industrial Revolution in New Delhi
- Mr Modi said the launch of this Centre, after SanFracisco, Tokyo and Beijing opens the door to immense possibilities in the future.
- Fourth Industrial Revolution has the strength to drive irreversible positive change in India and will facilitate required speed and scale to work being done in the country.
- He said, Industry 4.0, and the expansion of Artificial Intelligence, will lead to better healthcare, and reduce expenditure on health.
- The Prime Minister said, it will also help farmers, and prove beneficial in the areas of agriculture, transportation and smart mobility and other sectors.
- He said that for India, this is not just an industrial transformation, but a social transformation.
- He added that as work progresses in India in these areas, one of the targets is Solve for India, Solve for the World.
- The Prime Minister said, the Digital India movement has brought data to villages of India.
HM
- Rescue and relief operations are on full swing in the cyclonic storm Titli hit coastal areas of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh.
- The National Disaster Response Force, NDRF has deployed 14 teams in Odisha, four teams in Andhra and three teams in West Bengal along with necessary rescue equipment.
- In Andhra Pradesh, seven persons were killed due to rain related incidents in Srikakulam district. In the Ganjam District of Odisha, six persons have been washed away in the current of a tributary of River Rushikulya.
FM
- Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said there has been 15-20% gradual increase in tax collections every year.
- Delivering the Valedictory address at the 29th Conference of Accountants General in New Delhi today, Mr Jaitley said, due to strict compliance the direct tax collection is increasing.
- He said, when NDA government came to power, the total number of people who filed Income Tax returns in the country was 3 crore 80 lakh. Mr Jaitley said, it has reached to six crore 86 lakh people in the last four year.
MEA
- External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj today held bilateral meeting with Tajikistan counterpart Sirojiddin Muhriddin in Dushanbe.
- She also met Chief Executive of Afghanistan Dr Abdullah on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, SCO meeting.
- Mrs Swaraj reached the Tajikistan capital to attend a two-day SCO Heads of Government Council Meeting. Stepping up bilateral ties in areas of Science and Technology, Information Technology, agriculture, defence and security, health and tourism.
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