THE Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) announced on Friday it is planning to cut the processing time of mining permits.

In a media briefing during an event, DENR Secretary Maria Antonia Yulo-Loyzaga said the agency aims to reduce the time from six years to one to three years as it plans to digitalize most of its processes with a goal of attracting more investors to the Philippines and implement digitalization within this year.

"We are indeed in the process of digitalizing these permits and processes, and we hope to implement them and be online by this year," said Yulo-Loyzaga.

"We are going to be testing a few of the digitalized processing, in fact some of the permits that are in the priority [are] the Environment Compliance Certificate projects," she added.

Meanwhile, Frederick Go, special assistant to the president for investment and economic affairs, said that the reason for this initiative is for ease of doing business, and he is happy with the DENR's progress.

"The goal for this is the ease of doing business [for investors], and it has been a pleasure working with Secretary Loyzaga in improving this, especially with the mining sector," Go said during the briefing.

"I think we are moving in the right direction as apart from digitalization, Secretary Loyzaga also suggested that permits be processed simultaneously rather than in sequence.... This initiative can really help improve the speed processing for permits," he added.

In November 2022, the DENR said it would push for digitalization by streamlining some of its processes from a traditional paper record management system to advanced digital platforms in order to fully connect its central office to all its field offices across the country.

Yulo-Loyzaga also mentioned that the DENR, together with other agencies, is trying to design a common, operational geospatial platform in order for investors to survey possible areas of investment.

"What that does is to actually locate the mineral resources, locate infrastructures that could be essential for the delivery of the production of these minerals," Yulo-Loyzaga said.

"We have been discussing it within ourselves (government agencies) and so here in the DENR, we are ready in terms of the mapping of our mineral resources and [merging] that data with others," she added.

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