A second national plan on mineral resources, spanning 2006 to 2010, is being drafted and will be submitted to the State Council in August, the Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR) said yesterday.

The plan will emphasize improving security for mineral resources, strengthening supervision of resource inspection and utilization, and transforming the current mode of exploitation, MLR chief Xu Shaoshi said.

It will also address key relationships, namely, that between the current and the future, resource exploitation and environmental protection, a market mechanism and a planning body, as well as domestic and overseas resources and markets, he said.

Implemented between 2001 and 2005, the first national plan on mineral resources was developed under different socio-economic conditions than that of today, Ju Jianhua, deputy head of the MLR's planning department, told China Daily.

"It was drafted during a time when macro-control was underdeveloped and overall development was low. Therefore, an encouragement of resource exploitation was fairly obvious," he said.

"But now, the emphasis has shifted to carrying out exploitation in a more ordered way."

Ju said the new plan has come two years later, in part because the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-10), China's overall development guideline, was released only last year.

"Coherent with national objectives laid out in this period, our program seeks to contribute to the construction of an energy-saving and environmentally-friendly country," he said.

But that is no easy task. For one, resource waste is still common in many areas.

China has a 30 percent mining recovery rate and a 35 percent utilization rate of intergrown and associated minerals, both 20 percent lower than in developed countries.

Moreover, 43 percent of all medium and large mines have not been comprehensively utilized, the MLR said.

Official figures estimate that today, the discovery rate of mineral resources in China is below one-third.

(China Daily June 13, 2007)