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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Snowshoe who wrote (148166)	4/29/2019 9:37:50 PM
From: TobagoJack	Respond to of 218253

no problem, as factually folks in the Philippines are too busy selling sand to team china for island making lot more sand to go around in the Philippines some kind of crazy mixed up world and as team Hong Kong is engaged in making a new island, HK is now also a big buyer of sand I do not know how islands are made, but as I dig into the subject am discovering a lot of interesting facts about very specialised equipment and ways manilatimes.net Sand pirates need swifter govt action than a probeEDITORIALLAST week, a dredging ship flying the flag of Sierra Leone but manned by a Chinese crew was “discovered” off coast of Batangas, busily stealing sand from the seabed. The presence of this foreign vessel caused a minor stir and revelations of other instances of illegal sand mining elsewhere in the country, and inevitably, a call for a “probe” by a lawmaker, in this case Sen. Ralph Recto. Various studies estimate global demand for sand is anywhere from one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half times global production capacity. Common sand is in such high demand because it has two main uses: First, it is a necessary ingredient in concrete. Second, it is the preferred base material for land reclamation. Sand is cheap, easy to handle, and when compressed forms a safe, stable foundation for artificially built islands and shore extensions. While sand is not exactly an infinite resource, it is abundant enough that even with humanity’s huge appetite for it, the global supply will still last for centuries. Of course, not all of the sand is readily accessible to the consumers with the biggest appetites for it, and that is why the Philippines continually finds itself being marauded by sand pirates. Hong Kong and Singapore have huge demand for sand, but with no resources of their own to supply reclamation and construction projects, they have to import what they need. Both governments seem to turn a blind eye to whether or not the millions of tons of sand imported every year are legitimately obtained or not. Besides the Philippines, other countries namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia and Myanmar have at various times all raised complaints about having their land literally stolen right under their feet. There are basically two types of sand-harvesting businesses in the Philippines. The first is the legal one; local producers, most of whom are properly regulated, and who sell virtually all of their production to local buyers. Then there are the local smugglers; these may or may not be operating under the cover of a legal business, and their production is entirely for export, whether through technical smuggling or the simpler expedience of sneaking it away through the Philippines’ poorly-defended maritime borders. Recto made the offhand proposal that the country should impose an export ban on sand and gravel. That sounds like a reasonable idea and a proactive response, but will actually be pointless if it turns out almost all the sand “exported” now is done through entirely illegal means. The only exports that might be stopped will be the relatively few done through fraudulent documents and bribing customs officials, in which case the parties involved could just switch to a simpler solution. Given that demand is so great, there is no solution to fix the problem. The only thing Recto and other concerned officials can do is to strengthen policy to make the Philippines’ sand much harder to steal. That, unfortunately, most definitely falls into the “easier said than done” category because the two obvious steps to take — strengthening maritime security, and holding local officials liable for participating in or allowing illegal mining — are basic responsibilities the government seems to have flubbed. The Chinese-manned vessel should have been intercepted by a well-armed Coast Guard or Navy vessel right when it was discovered off Batangas, its crew given a 60-second warning to abandon ship before it was blown out of the water. That would make the proper impression, and would encourage the sand pirates to find easier targets. What will happen, instead, is a legislative hearing that may, in six to 12 months’ time, result in a useless law that specifically declares sand smuggling illegal and imposes penalties thereon, penalties that will be suffered by precisely no one. And the Philippines will go on wondering why mainland Asia continues to treat it like a doormat.