Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative may help curb illegal mining; India reluctant to sign up
by Naren Karunakaran, Economic Times, Feb 14, 2012
Last week, Sashi Mukundan, India head of the oil and gas behemoth BP, which now partners Reliance Industries Limited, called for codifying of globally acceptable industry practices to sanitise production-sharing contracts between the government and oil companies.
Around the same time, reports emerged about the Comptroller & Auditor General (CAG) preparing to compute losses to the exchequer due to declining gas production from RIL's KG-D6 fields, something akin to what it did to highlight the 2G scam in telecom.
In the same week, the Supreme Court panel examining the mining scam in Karnataka lamented the plunder of mineral resources; an earlier Lokayukta report had pegged losses to the state due to illegal iron mining at Rs 16,085 crore in a fiveyear period.
The three developments are symptomatic of the deep crisis that has gripped the Indian extractive sector. Much of it stems from the opaque processes prevalent and the deep inequities they foster. READ....
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