The annual survey asked companies that spent a combined total of $US1.83 billion ($A2.57 billion) on international exploration in 2005 (about a third of the global expenditure) on their impressions of 64 different jurisdictions when it comes to working in the minerals industry.
The survey’s “current mineral potential index” ranks the “best” places to explore in the world as it takes into account both the mineral prospectivity of a region and the current policy environment.
This year the top 10 jurisdictions were Chile, Nevada, Mongolia, Quebec, Mali, South Australia, Ghana, Mexico, Ontario and Western Australia. Tasmania ranked 17, Queensland 19, New South Wales 23 and the Northern Territory 24.
Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Venezuela were all in the bottom 10.
The “policy potential index” is described by Fraser’s as basically a report card as to how enticing the current regulatory regime in a country is when it come to minerals exploration.
Nevada, Alberta, Manitoba, Chile and Quebec were the top five countries. Tasmania made last year’s top 10 but slipped to 15th this year, Queensland fell from 18th to 29th and Victoria dropped from 23rd to 30th overall.
NSW was a standout improver, jumping from 19th to 12th. WA came in at 11th and the Northern Territory boosted its rating by five places to finish 20th.
Zimbabwe achieved the worst ranking in the survey’s history, falling from 7.6/100 last year to just 2.4.
The survey also asked respondents to consider each jurisdiction under a “best practices” policy environment. That is, how attractive is a country to explore in if a regulatory regime is so favourable it is factored out of the equation, basically rating the exploration prospectivity.
Standouts in this category were Russia, Peru, Mali, Ghana, the DRC, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the North West Territories (Canada), Nunavut, Nevada, Chile, China and WA.
The “room for improvement index” dictates how far away the survey’s respondents believe a jurisdiction’s regulations are from best practice – not surprisingly Zimbabwe is right up there at the top.
Colorado’s regulations came in as having the most room for improvement and the DRC, California and PNG round out the top five. China, Zambia and Indonesia could also do with a policy makeover according to the survey.
However, when it came to comments from the miners, Australia came under some criticism.
Anonymity was granted to the people quoted, so an unnamed vice president of an exploration company had this to say about Australia: “We invested heavily (in Australia) and got sued by a subsidiary when we tried to change the board composition. The courts were prejudiced against our being a foreign company and the securities commission (ASIC) was gutless and impotent, clearly not championing shareholder rights and pursuing only high profile cases where a political reward was evident.
“We won’t touch Australia as a result.”
The NT came in for some praise from an “official” of an exploration company.
“Australia (NT) has a good regulatory environment because of a serious desire to build the exploration and mining sector in the region, and a sensible and balanced can-do attitude towards regulation.”
Of the 164 companies to respond, 130 had increased their exploration expenditure from last year.
A full copy of the survey can be accessed at:
http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=830
