The mining industry is an important contributor both to Canada’s economy and to economies around the world. It provides not only materials essential for all sectors of the economy, but also employment and government revenues. Mining contributes to economic growth worldwide and Canadian mining companies operate in jurisdictions around the world. While mineral potential is obviously a very important consideration in encouraging or dissuading mining investment, the impact of government policies can also be significant in encouraging or discouraging investment in this important area of economic activity. Moreover, many regions around the world have attractive geology and competitive policies, allowing exploration investment to be shifted away from jurisdictions with unattractive policies.
Since 1997, the Fraser Institute has conducted an annual survey of mining and exploration companies to assess how mineral endowments and public policy factors such as taxation and regulation affect exploration investment. Our purpose is to create a “report card” that governments can use to improve their mining-related public policy in order to attract investment in their mining sector to better their economic productivity and employment. Others in the mining sector, investment sector, academia, and the media also may find the survey useful for evaluating potential investment decisions, or for assessing various risk factors in jurisdictions of interest.1 This year the survey includes 91 jurisdictions from all continents except Antarctica. The 2017 questionnaire included a number of jurisdictions that had insufficient responses to enable them to be included in the report. The minimum threshold for inclusion this year was five responses. Jurisdictions with between 5 and 9 responses were included, but have been noted accordingly. Any jurisdiction with fewer than 5 responses was dropped. This year’s dropped jurisdictions include:
- Afghanistan,
- Albania,
- Angola,
- Argentina: Rio Negro,
- Armenia,
- Belarus,
- Bulgaria,
- Burundi,
- Cambodia,
- Central African Republic,
- Egypt,
- Eritrea,
- Estonia,
- France,
- Gabon,
- Greece, Guinea (Conakry),
- Honduras,
- Hungary,
- India,
- Iraq,
- Israel,
- Jordan,
- Kyrgyzstan,
- Laos,
- Lesotho,
- Liberia,
- Madagascar,
- Malawi,
- Malaysia,
- Mauritania,
- Myanmar,
- New Caledonia,
- Niger,
- Nigeria,
- Oman,
- Pakistan,
- Poland,
- Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville),
- Saudi Arabia,
- Senegal,
- Sierra Leone,
- Slovakia,
- Solomon Islands,
- South Sudan,
- Sudan,
- Swaziland,
- Tajikistan,
- Thailand,
- Tunisia,
- Uganda,
- Uruguay, and
- Vietnam.
While we would prefer to directly measure the impacts of specific mining policy changes on investment in the sector, there are many barriers to doing so. The effects of policy on deterring exploration investment may not be immediately available. Jurisdictions are added to the survey based on interest from survey respondents, and their inclusion fluctuates based on a variety of factors such as industry turnover, industry downturns, and the movement of mining investment into jurisdictions seen as more attractive. This survey is published annually and the results are available and accessible to an increasingly global audience. In the past, detailed tables were included in an appendix showing the breakdown of scores on each question for each individual jurisdiction. Those tables are now available online at https://www.fraserinstitute.org/
categories/mining.
The Fraser Institute’s mining survey is an informal survey that attempts to assess the perceptions of mining company executives about various optimal and sub-optimal public policies that might affect the hospitality of a jurisdiction to mining investment. Given the survey’s very broad circulation, its extensive press coverage, and the positive feedback we receive from miners, investors, and policymakers about its usefulness, we believe that the survey broadly captures the perceptions of those involved in both mining and the regulation of mining for the jurisdictions included.
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