Another 17 mining operations will undergo audit by the interagency Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC) starting this month to determine if they have been following the country’s mining regulations and standards, the Department of Finance (DOF) said Tuesday.

The upcoming second round of “objective, science-based, and fact-finding” audit was expected to be finished by January next year, according to the DOF, which co-chairs the MICC together with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR).

However, the DOF did not identify the mining operations to be included in the next batch of review.

During a recent MICC meeting, Finance Undersecretary Bayani H. Agabin disclosed that the next audit would be undertaken by the same technical teams that reviewed 26 mining sites last year.

“The MICC will complete the review and management teams in the second and third week of July. We will tap around 15 experts from the same technical teams that did the first audit,” Agabin said.

The 15 experts will be grouped into three teams with five members for each panel, and will have senior and junior technical and research assistants to help them with the audit. The review will cover the environmental, economic, social, legal and technical aspects of the mining operations.