Extractive industries

The government will stop issuing new coal mining licences due to the substance’s harmful effects on health, said U Ohn Win, Union Minister for Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation. He also said factories which violate regulations in the burning of coal will be shut down. ...

A landslide in northern Myanmar’s jade mining region has killed 9 people, a local official said on February 11, the latest fatal incident to strike the shadowy billion-dollar industry. The men were believed to be searching for jade in Kachin State when a wall of unstable ...

Kachin people have complained that mining companies are dumping waste soil recklessly and that it could trigger natural disasters. “We’ve found some companies dumped slag near tributaries of the Uru River. The waste soil could block the river during the rainy season,” said a resident of ...

The nickel market has been undergoing wild swings this year, pummeled by Indonesia’s move to relax an export ban but later buoyed by expectations of a supply decrease from the Philippines. The Philippines said last Thursday that it will close mines responsible for roughly half of the ...

Anti-globalization and protectionist attitudes are increasing in some countries, but Vietnam still has an open economy. This means big challenges for Vietnam in upcoming days. US President Donald Trump on January 23 officially pulled out of the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, a move that The New ...

Australia boasted its biggest trade surplus on record in December as surging commodity prices showered the resource-rich nation in cash, a windfall that could lessen the risk of a downgrade to its triple A credit ratings. Yesterday’s data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed ...

Vietnam Steel Corporation (VnSteel) aims to earn a consolidated revenue of US$835.5 million in 2017, an increase of VNĐ800 billion from 2016. It will produce around 2.4 million tonnes of steel billets this year, up 17 per cent from 2016, VnSteel said. To accomplish these ...

Despite their stated aim of boosting low-carbon growth, World Bank policy loans to countries like Indonesia are creating subsidies for coal, gas and oil projects, according to a report released today by the nonprofit Bank Information Center. At the same time, these policy programs undercut ...

At a government-organised forum on sand exports on January 24, a Ministry of Mines and Energy official said an investigation had been carried out into huge discrepancies in data on sand export from Cambodia to Singapore but that the probe found no irregularities. UN data ...

Halting the pace at which we’re destroying the world’s forests for agriculture, forestry, mines, and other economic development projects is crucial to combating climate change. Carbon finance, which involves creating monetary incentives for companies and countries to invest in programs to reduce carbon emissions, is ...