Date | Feb 09, 2017:

Government today said 2017-18 would be the most important year for the mining industry as leases of around 300 mineral blocks would be auctioned during the fiscal. “In 2017-18 nearly 300 mining leases should be put on auction by different states,” Mines Secretary Balvinder Kumar said during an event. Stating that some of the states have very large number of mining leases, he said that Karnataka alone has about 100 odd leases which would be put on auction. “The fiscal 2017-18 will see a very big change in allocation of mining leases,” he said.

So far, around 21 mining leases have already been auctioned and these mineral blocks have a cumulative resource value of around Rs 94,000 crore, he added.

The Mines Ministry has already facilitated the auction process extending support from IBM and GSI and various PSUs such as MSTC, MECON, MECL and SBICAP.

Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha are among the states preparing for auction of mineral blocks like iron ore, limestone and bauxite in the next financial year, the government had earlier said.

The blocks to be available for auction in future which are being explored under National Mineral Exploration Trust (NMET) or by GSI or by MECL are being explored by entities under the New Exploration Policy.

(Source: http://www.financialexpress.com/)