For the country’s mining industry to fully recover and contribute to the fast-growing economy, the government has to address the lack of mining engineers and create a more enabling climate for mining investors in the country.
The Philippines is presently suffering from a scarcity of mining engineers, a trend which started in 1999 when all mining operations in the country were stopped, said Caesar I. Lao-as, outgoing president of Philippine Society of Mining Engineers (PSEM) during yesterday’s opening of the 2014 National Mining Convention held at the Radisson Blu Hotel.
PSEM officials led by Lao-as emphasized the huge potential that the mining industry can contribute to the country’s economy.
“In 2005, however, we started to see the industry starting to kick start again, and we saw the gap in the number of engineers available,” Lao-as said.
To date, there are only 11 universities in the country that offer mining engineering courses, from which only over a hundred engineers are produced every year.
Last year, there were 117 graduates who passed the exam for mining engineers out of only 143 who took it.
“That number is already good but we need more if we want to start attracting mining investors and see the full renaissance of the mining industry which was among the country’s major industries in the ‘70s,” said incoming PSEM president Felizardo A. Gacad, Jr.
Based on data from the Philippine Regulatory Commission, there only 3,000 licensed mining engineers in the country but most of these are employed outside the country like in Indonesia and Australia, which offers salaries five to ten times more than the rates here, said Victor J. Bantol, outgoing president of PSEM Visayas Chapter.
Gacad said that to encourage more Filipinos to go into this profession, the demand should be increased by establishing a better climate for mining investors in the country.
“The climate now is not that encouraging for mining companies that is why they also limit their expansions. We need this to improve so that our graduates can also find companies here to work for and not need to go abroad,” he said.
According to Lao-as, mining engineering is one of the highest-paid professions now, but there’s not much interest in it.
“Current entry level salary would average from P40,000 to P50,000 a month. In other countries, licensed mining engineers are paid way more than that. They are paid an average of US$3,000 to US$5,000 every month,” he said.
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