Philex to adopt international mining standards

MANILA, Philippines – Philex Mining Corp., the listed mining company chaired by businessman Manuel Pangilinan, is heeding the call of the Duterte government to benchmark its standard operations with international best practices such as those in Canada and Australia.

“We’re heeding the call of the Duterte government to benchmark ourselves to international standards,” Pangilinan said yesterday after the company’s annual stockholders meeting.

He said the company discussed the matter during its board meeting yesterday.

As such, he said the management of Philex has been tasked to look into which international mining standards suit their respective operations best.

“There’s been a suggestion by the Duterte government to the mining companies that the industry benchmarks itself to standards of Canada and Australia and we took this up in the board meeting today that Philex should lead that effort in benchmarking ourselves to international standards,” Pangilinan said.

He said management would look into which of the two would be appropriate.

“Some aspects of our operations follow Canadian standards and some follow Australian standards,” he said.

He said the company expects to incur additional operating costs when it adopts international standards.

Nevertheless, the company expects this year’s core net income to be ahead of last year.

“It looks like core income will be ahead of last year,” he said, attributing this to the grade of the ore, operating expenses and the price of copper and gold as well as the exchange rate.

“All of these things work together to influence the performance of Philex,” Pangilinan said.

In his report during the company’s stockholders meeting, Pangilinan said the company was able to deliver a net income of P776 million last year, 10 percent better than 2014’s P703 million despite the persistent pressure on metal prices.

“We generated consolidated revenues of P9.362 billion last year, of which P5.670 billion came from gold, P3.450 billion from copper and P70 million from silver,” he said.