Positioning the Philippines in the Global Mining Dialogue

Just recently, I was part of a keynote government panel during the “Resourcing Tomorrow International Conference on Investing in Metals and Minerals, Securing the Future” at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong.

I was there to make a case — one I have been making for years, in various rooms, before various audiences — that the Philippines is ready to be taken seriously as a strategic partner in the global energy transition.

The Philippines is not just a passive supplier of raw ore, but a country with the geological endowment, the institutional capacity, and the sovereign will to help shape what a responsible, equitable critical minerals economy looks like.

The author with son Javi Toledo

All these, especially now, under the administration of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. or PBBM.

Resourcing Tomorrow Hong Kong was designed as a senior-level conference bringing together decision-makers from mining, capital markets, banking, professional services, and government — precisely the audience that needs to hear the Philippine story told plainly and without apology.

The 2026 agenda focused on critical minerals and battery supply chains, geopolitical risk in a fragmenting global environment, and the engagement of Asian capital in the mining sector. These are not abstract themes. They are the very fault lines along which the Philippines must now position itself — deliberately, credibly, and with urgency.

Let me be direct about where we stand.

The Philippines is the fifth most mineralized country in the world, with an estimated $1 trillion in untapped mineral reserves, including copper, gold, nickel, zinc and silver. This is a geological fact with profound economic and geopolitical implications. And yet, for too long, we have allowed that endowment to be defined by what we ship out rather than what we build from it.

In 2024, the Philippines produced approximately 430,000 metric tons of nickel — about 25 percent of global supply — but exported 90 percent of that as raw ore, capturing only a fraction of the value that midstream and downstream processing would generate. We are exporting the raw ingredients of the green transition while others manufacture the finished product, capture the value-added margins, and set the terms of trade.

That is a structural disadvantage we must correct. It persists not only because of capital constraints or infrastructure gaps, but because for too long, mining in the Philippines has been a politically contested enterprise, caught between legitimate environmental concerns, community grievances, and a regulatory environment that has sometimes prioritized caution over coherence.

I understand these tensions, as I work inside them every day. But leaving our mineral wealth in the ground while the world builds its green future elsewhere is not a sustainable act of environmental virtue. It is an abdication of economic responsibility.

The demand picture makes this more urgent, not less. Nickel enhances the energy density and driving range of EV battery cathodes, while copper is indispensable to the electrical wiring and motors that make electric vehicles run. Both metals are embedded in the Philippine landscape in quantities that most nations can only envy.

By 2040, the mining market in Southeast Asia is projected to reach $110 billion, with Indonesia and the Philippines together supplying 72 percent of the world’s nickel. J.P. Morgan Global Research projects global lithium demand to grow 16 percent year-over-year in 2026, with 58 percent of that incremental demand driven by electric vehicles. Copper, similarly, faces tightening supply as grid infrastructure and renewable energy storage scale globally. The demand trajectory for these materials is not speculative, it is settled.

This is the case, the position I brought to Hong Kong. The world needs what lies beneath our soil. The question is whether we will be ready — and whether we will be respected — when that need reaches full intensity. We are not asking the world to trust us on faith. We are asking it to look at what we have built and recognize a partner that is prepared for the next chapter.

The ore is here. The ambition is here. The industry is here.

Our position in the global mining dialogue depends truly on us. *