The Committee on Environmental Policy and Nature Management recommended that the Verkhovna Rada adopt in the second reading and as a whole Draft Law No. 6227 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Updating the National Program for the Development of the Mineral Resource Base of Ukraine for the Period up to 2030 and Regulation of Certain Issues Regarding Minerals and Components of Strategic and Critical Importance.”
The relevant notice was published on the committee's website.
Thepurpose of the draft law is to update the National Program for the Development of Ukraine's Mineral Resources for the Period up to 2030, which was approved in 2011.
The draft law also amends the Subsoil Code of Ukraine, in particular with regard to minerals that are of strategic and critical importance for the sustainable development of the economy and the state's defense capability. These changes are necessary to implement the reforms set out in the Ukraine Facility Plan.
In particular, the innovations include:
- the division of minerals into 4 categories according to their industrial and economic significance is introduced: category A (significant reserves, intensively mined), category B (small or depleted reserves, limited production, imported), category C (significant reserves, limited or no production – unprofitable), category D (reserves are not being developed and insufficiently studied).
- It should be emphasized that the state is interested in maximum substitution of hydrocarbon imports;
- coal has become one of the main sources of meeting Ukraine's energy needs;
- updated figures for mineral reserves compared to 2010 data.
The Environmental Committee said that during the preparation for the second reading, 43 out of 323 amendments and proposals to the draft law were rejected, while the rest were taken into account, including partially and editorially. The rejected amendments and proposals concern mutually contradictory versions of certain provisions of the document, the MPs said.
The new draft law provides for:
- Concentration of geological exploration on priority areas for the development of the mineral resource base.
- Concentration of state funding for subsoil exploration exclusively on prospecting and appraisal work to identify investment-attractive objects. Further exploration of mineral deposits will not be funded by the state budget and should be financed by subsoil users on the basis of investment risk. For its part, the state ensures the creation of the necessary transparent and stable regulatory conditions for subsoil users to increase mineral reserves and their further extraction.
- The state retains the right to conduct regional studies of the territory of Ukraine aimed at expanding the mineral resource base, including completion of geological mapping under the State Geocarta-200 program, hydrogeological and environmental geological works, and maintenance of state balances and mineral cadastres, monitoring of the resource base, subsoil users' activities, etc.
- Scientific and informational support of all stages of work, including through constant monitoring of trends in the development of the global and Ukrainian mineral market.
Particular attention is paid to preserving and ensuring maximum accessibility of the accumulated geological information for its prompt use by potential subsoil users through the rapid introduction of modern digital technologies for its storage and use.
The explanatory note to the draft law No. 6227 states that the current version of the Program provides for funding for the period 2011-2030 at the expense of the state budget in the amount of UAH 26.1 billion. The proposed version of the Program envisages funding from the state budget in the amount of UAH 8.2 billion, including UAH 6.3 billion for the period 2011-2030.
The authors of the document envisage that a significant part of the funds spent on the Program will be compensated during its implementation through the proceeds from the sale of special permits for subsoil use for the areas allocated during the Program implementation, as well as from the sale of geological information created during the Program implementation.
The volumes of these revenues in 2019 and for 11 months of 2020 alone amounted to UAH 992 million and UAH 878 million, the note says.
As GMK Center reported earlier, on December 4, the Environmental Committee supported the draft law No. 12188 on mining waste. Later, EcoPolitics informed that, according to the European Business Association, this document needs to be finalized.
