When the subject of quotas for the Chinese rare-earth industry comes up, we’re generally talking about export quotas, which control (in theory at least) how much material may be shipped out of China, in any given period, and by which companies. Such quotas are controlled by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and their existence is at the heart of the recent WTO complaints filed by the USA, Japan and the EU, against China.
There are, however, at least two other sets of quotas that affect the rare-earth industry in China. The first concerns the separation and smelting of rare-earth products, controlled by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT); the other concerns mining quotas, controlled by the Chinese Ministry of Land and Resources (MLR). Of the two, the mining quotas are usually the more prominent, and each year, usually sometime in March, the MLR publishes a list of the mining quotas that have been allocated to each province or region in China.
Each year that is, until this year.
For 2012, the MLR has taken a different approach to the allocation of mining quotas. The first difference is that the Ministry does not appear to have published a single list of mining quotas allocated to the provinces and regions, as it has in previous years. Instead, individual departments for land and resources within the provincial and regional governments were apparently sent a notice roughly titled “2012 Tungsten, Antimony And Rare Earth Mining Quotas (First Batch)” (a copy of which is not available online) indicating the mining quota allocated, and the companies to whom those quotas were to be assigned.
{ 10 comments }
