It was 23.09 at night… The exhaustion of getting Marble Trend ready for printing after a busy period combined with relaxation. Sleep was calling me as I received a WhatsApp message regarding the mining industry’s visit to the presidential place. We go to the site at night, and in the morning we pick up the phone for details. What happened, what was discussed with Presidential assistan Fuat Oktay? Here is the behind the scenes of the visit.
1- EMİB President İbrahim Alimoğlu took the appointment for the reception in the palace. The meeting, which lasted 45 minutes, was attended by İMİB President Rüstem Çetinkaya, EMİB President İbrahim Alimoğlu, EMİB Vice President İbrahim Altınpınar, TÜMMER President Hanifi Şimşek and TMD Vice President Mehmet Yılmaz.
2- The presidents determined the tactics before the meeting. Instead of everyone’s pointing out different problems, two issues that need urgent solutions were focused on: Security investigation processes and the attitude of the Ministry of Forestry towards the miners.
3- It was stated that each person went through at least 4-5 security investigations for each license, and that a miner with 4-5 licenses went through about 25 security investigations in 5 years for this reason, which both prolonged the processes and created grievances, “At least this duplication should be eliminated” was demanded. IMIB President Rüstem Çetinkaya reminded his presentation on this issue 4 years ago and underlined that nothing has changed. Oktay gave the right to the issue of duplication. As a suggestion, it was presented that the process could be accelerated with an application such as the green line, or that the companies could be subject to a security investigation every 3 years if the shareholding structure did not change.
4- It was emphasized that the long and uncertain investigation processes brought along some rumours in the sector, that the institutions pointed to the Palace on every issue they could not answer, and that this wore off the authorities! Oktay intervened here and said that there was not a single file waiting in the presidency. Then, the issue of executing the processes over e-government was discussed by Oktay. Sector leaders said, “We would be happy”
5- In the Ministry of Forestry, it was mentioned that the refusal of the permission requests was given due to non-legislative reasons such as view from the road, no public interest, there may be a social reaction. It was requested that the processes be carried out through the legislation. Basically, the presidents explained that making these two issues transparent and reasonable will solve the uncertainty in the sector. It was emphasized that while Turkey’s exports in the mining sector increased and there was an promising appetite, uncertainties and repeated investigations blunted this appetite.
Oktay listened, took notes, said they would work for a solution. What will be the result, we will wait and see.
Star of the meeting? It was very clearly İbrahim Altınpınar… Let the reason remain with us.
