Growth of employment and investment in licenses granted to mining sector

A recent report by the Ministry of Industry, Mine and Trade of Iran on licensing in the mining sector confirms that there has been a growth in the employment and investment rates.

The report, comparing the performance of the one-year period ending March 2017 with that of 2016, presents an overview of construction, operation and employment permits. Likewise, the status of industrial permits is covered as well.
According to the report, granting permits to commence exploration operations increased by 11%. The number of licenses resulting in the mining activity was 9%, but apparently, an increase of 7% is witnessed in exploitation licensing. The number of licenses and certificates of exploration reached 800 and 573, respectively. During the survey period, 854 mining permits were also granted.

$4.6bn License for base metals
Separating the licenses issued in the mining and its associated industries shows that for setting up base metal plants, an increase of over 4% in the number of licenses, 24% in the investments and 2.8% in the employment is observed. Over the past year, investment licenses of $4.6bn and $2.7bn are issued for the production of base metals and non-metallic minerals, respectively.

Growth of exploitation licenses
In the category of exploitation licenses, there has been an increase in employment, investment and the number of the permits by 23%, 196%, and 1.8 percent, respectively. In 2015-16, the exploitation license for base metal production units was issued with a $1.7bn investment. In addition, other non-metallic mineral products received a license worth $864mn.

During the period, the industry sector was subject to more fluctuations compared with the mining sector. Thus, there was a rise in the number of exploitation licenses, investment in the exploitation license, as well as employment (5% to 63%). However, investment of the issued licenses and employment of the establishment license declined by up to 2.1%.