BY SAMIE WAIKORI
The Central Bank of Solomon Islands (CBSI) has reported $1.5 billion in proceeds from Minerals export from January to July 2025.
In terms of the country’s overall export, minerals scooped almost a quarter of the country’s export for this year.
Speaking before the Bills & Legislative Committee (BLC) on the Minerals and Resources Bill 2025 this week, Advisor Policy at CBSI, Mr Michael Fifiolo highlighted the critical situation faced by the country in terms of economic growth.
“Ideally, I would like to see economic growth sustain above the country’s population growth rate of around 2.4% to ensure sustain improvement in people’s living standard.
“With the anticipated decline in the forestry sector activities, the country is in the position where it has to look for alternative sources of growth,” Fifiolo said.
He noted that faced with the situation, the Minerals and Resources Bill 2025 is very important, as the mineral sector is considered to be one of the alternative industries to support and drive the country’s economy.
Fifiolo mentioned that over recent years, the mineral sector has offered numerous benefits like creation of job opportunities and increase of mineral export.
He added that this also includes taxes and royalties to landowners and provincial governments and spill of benefits to other sectors of the economy.
“Also, record up to July this year shows mineral export stands at 1.5 billion – an increase of 1.36 billion from last year.
“In terms of the overall export of the country, mineral export stands at almost a quarter of total export for the country.
“That comes mainly from gold, bauxite and nickel. Unfortunately, there’s also associate minerals we are not able to capture,” Fifiolo said.
Moreover, he highlighted some of the areas CBSI plays in terms of exports and why they see the bill as important.
Fifiolo said CBSI has close collaborations with the Mines Division and Customs & Exercise in terms of assessment of export applications.
However, he revealed that the challenges CBSI faced was their inability to verify the type and volume of mineral resources that been declared for export.
“From our stand point, we solely relied on Mines Division to do the verification to which they have the appropriate technical capacity.
“CBSI doesn’t do verification and that leaves us in a position that we can only accept what has been declared as the real export value.
“And on our side, the export will proceed and expect what will come back into the country under the exchange control act.
“Given the challenges, we hope the Minerals and Resource Bill 2025 would fill-in the gaps and address the issue,” he said.
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