MSC urges govt to promote tin prospecting and mining
By On Ju Lynn in Penang
- The Star 29th May, 2001

Malaysian Smelting Corp Bhd (MSC) has urged the government to come up with a policy to promote prospecting and tin mining to reduce the country's dependence on imported tin concentrates.

Chief executive officer Datuk Mohd Ajib Anuar said that almost 80% of the company's total intake of feed materials or tin concentrates were now imported.

"If no effort is taken to promote tin prospecting and mining, the company would have to depend entirely on imported tin concentrates by 2005," he said after the company's AGM yesterday.

Ajib said that the lack of coherent policy to convert potential tin resource land to mining leases and fear that mining activities were damaging to the environment had thwarted potential increases in domestic tin concentrate production.

"As many as 500ha of ex mining land, a large portion of which are in Perak, are left barren for the simple reason that there is no incentive to encourage miners to rehabilitate the land after the mining lease expire," he said adding that mining leases were usually for between two and five years.

Ajib said the Malaysian Chanber of Mines, of which he was the senior member, proposed to the Perak government last year to lift the freeze on mining applications but had not got any response yet.

"As land and mining are state issues, we would like to discuss with any state ways in which miners could help rehabilitate and develop ex-mining land into commercially viable activities such as aquaculture, agriculture or housing," he said.

MSC, the country's only smelting company, reported a record group pre-tax profit of RM27.5 million last year, up 10.8% from the prior year primarily due to robust demand from global micro-electronics and telecommunications industries.

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