Mining executives: Nevada near top for new investment

The remote hills of northern Nevada may contain some of the world's largest deposits of gold, but mining executives pay just much attention to what happens along a busy stretch of Carson Street near the State Capitol complex.

A new survey of mining executives worldwide finds they consider Nevada the best place in the nation and the second-best in the world for new investment. The state's regulatory environment is a key factor.

"Miners take a gamble on what is in the ground, but they also take gamble on what is going to happen regarding policy ownership, property rights all sorts of things," says Fred McMahon, who coordinated the survey for Canada's Fraser Institute. "Miners spend years throwing money into the ground before taking money out of the ground, and they need to know that the policy environment is stable. Nevada does very well there.

"And miners prefer to go to Nevada rather than a place like Bolivia, where you never know what is going to happen the next day, or even a place like Wisconsin, which is generally perceived as being hostile to mining to companies and having bad mining policies," McMahon adds.

Nevada's high mineral potential, quality infrastructure and the availability of labor and skilled workers accounted for its high ranking in the Fraser Institute's annual survey of mining executives.

The survey queried 372 mining executives and managers in 68 governments around the world.

Eighty-one percent encourage investment in Nevada based on its mineral potential assuming no land-use restrictions are in place. Almost 70 percent queried say Nevada is a healthy place to invest because it offers easy access to roads and power. And despite the lack of skilled personnel and labor that has plagued the mining industry for years, nearly half of executives polled 47 percent encourage spending in the state

based on the availability of its workforce.

Executives also found Nevada to have the most favorable environmental regulations to conduct business, and as well as offering the friendliest environment for personal, corporate, capital, payroll and other taxes.

Globally, Quebec ranks as the best overall place in the world to conduct mining business, followed by Nevada.

Other areas in which the state was ranked first are environmental regulations (28 percent), taxation (40 percent), political stability (76 percent) and the quality of its geological databases, such as the detail and scale of maps (58 percent).

The ranking is based on a composite of 14 separate policy areas. Nevada was third on the 2006/2007 survey and was ranked No. 1 twice before that.