Cost control a prime focus for miners

Cost control and management is the number one issue keeping Australia's mining leaders awake at night, according to The Australian.

The 2013 Mining Business Outlook report by Newport Consulting, which involved in-depth interviews with 60 top mining executives, revealed that 40% of those surveyed expressed cost-control and management as their major concern, a 23% increase on last year.

China risks following Japan into economic coma

After decades of emulating Japan's export-driven economic miracle, China appears in danger of following it into the same kind of economic coma that Japan is trying to wake from 20 years later, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

China is struggling to wean itself off a habit picked up from its more advanced neighbour: relying for growth on exports and credit-fuelled investment.

This has left its economy lopsided, economists say, with massive over-investment in property and industries rapidly losing their cost advantage, from mining and electronics to cars and textiles. Wages are rising, the return on investments falling.

Mining services firms build detention centres

Mining services companies providing housing for Australia’s once-booming resources industry are switching to another market: detention centres, according to the Australian Financial Review.

The Coalition is planning to build a new camp for at least 2000 people on the Pacific island of Nauru.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has come under pressure to explain why Toll Holdings – a logistics company that could profit from the Coalition’s plan – paid for his trip to the island.

Because of the rapid rise of refugees, many contractors are looking to take mining leftovers and use them to win tenders for processing centres.