Diwalwal gold being lost to smugglers?

The government earned about $1 billion worth of gold from explorations in Mt. Diwalwal alone in the past 20 years, but a mining expert and an administration lawmaker feared the country might have lost them to smugglers.

Artemi Disini, president of the Natural Resources and Mining Development Corp., which is under the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, told the House committee on natural resources, that he has no idea how much money went to the government.

"The record shows that for more than 20 years, approximately $1 billion worth of gold was earned. But as to how much went to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), we don’t know," he told reporters in an interview later.

Disini said the problem is the BSP’s long-standing policy of utmost secrecy on how much gold it has acquired or bought through the years.

Sorsogon City Rep. Jose Solis agreed with Disini. "It may have been put elsewhere. Maybe to smugglers. There’s no BSP presence there (in Mt. Diwalwal). Maybe the government even got less than 10 percent because there are no buying stations. Under the law, the BSP should have the first option to buy," he said.

Disini theorized that this amount of gold might have gone to jewelry outlets, sold to Chinese businessmen in Binondo or spirited out of the country.

He said an ounce of gold costs about $450. The country is expected to produce 35 to 40 tons of gold every year.

Solis, former chief of the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority (Namria), said he was surprised when he was told that only one BSP representative was designated in the entire Mt. Diwalwal area, which covers 8,000 hectares, in Monkayo, Compostela Valley.

Solis said the government should get at least 10 percent of the total gold haul in Mt. Diwalwal, although he feared this might not be so.

Solis urged the "temporary closure" of Mt. Diwalwal to prevent a repeat of the Oct. 26 tragedy when a tunnel collapsed due to an explosion, killing at least 32 miners, five of them still buried beneath the rubble. — With AP