DAVAO CITY – No bidder showed up yesterday to vie for a 25-year contract to explore and operate a 1,620-hectare mine site on Mt. Diwalwal in Compostela Valley.
It was not immediately clear why the six pre-qualified bidders stayed away from the bidding set at 2 p.m. at Q Bistro at Ortigas Center.
But earlier, a mining firm filed a petition with the Supreme Court questioning the bidding.
“It was a failed bidding.
No one submitted any bid,” Rodulfo Palma, Philippine Mining Development Corp. southern Mindanao regional director told The STAR. PMDC is the corporate arm of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The area being offered to mining investors is the Ulip-Paraiso portion of the 8,100-hectare Mt. Diwalwal mineral reservation area.
Palma said PMDC might schedule another bidding, depending on the decision of the board.
There were originally seven pre-qualified bidders, including the country’s biggest mining company, Philex Mining Corp., which backed out at the last minute for still unexplained reason.
The six remaining firms – mostly Chinese – were China Sci-Tech Holding Ltd./Songxian Fengyuan Molybdenum; Junheung International Co. Ltd.; R-II Builders/Karangalan Resources and Mining Corp.; Mt. Sinai Mining Exploration and Development Corp.; MTL Phil. Inc., and Mt. Apo Mining Development Corp./Hangzhou Jiantong Group Co. Ltd.
Palma said the formal opening of the bids proceeded yesterday despite the petition filed with the SC by the Southeast Mindanao Gold Mining Corp.
The SMGMC alleged that the site being offered to investors is part of a mineral reservation area stipulated in Presidential Proclamation No. 297.
“But the Supreme Court has not issued any order stopping the PMDC from proceeding with the opening. There was no temporary restraining order issued based on the petition, so, it had to continue,” Palma pointed out.
Mt. Diwalwal holds one of the world’s richest deposits of gold ore.
Mining operations in Mt. Diwalwal started in the 1980s. Some 50,000 small-scale miners depend on its mine site for livelihood. Violence had marred the search for gold in Mt. Diwalwal.
The gold buying station of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas reportedly buys as much as P25 million worth of gold from Diwalwal miners on regular days and up to P180 million on peak days.