In the new mechanism of geological prospecting, the positioning of geological prospecting fund is very clear and accurate, but it is far from it in practical work. Most local governments also regard financial funds as "geological exploration funds", but its purpose is neither to link up and adjust, nor to reduce commercial risks, but mainly to pursue the income of mining rights and form the main interest subjects in geological exploration. In 2009, the investment in geological exploration in Hebei Province was 746 million yuan, including 93 million yuan from the central government, 499 million yuan from the provincial government and 54 million yuan from social funds. The local financial input accounts for 66.9% of the total input. From 2006 to 2009, Shanxi Province invested 654.38+92.5 million yuan in provincial geological exploration funds and implemented 393 geological exploration projects. Obviously, such a large-scale investment and so many geological projects are not used to "connect" geological prospecting, nor to "adjust" geological prospecting. Their original intention was to engage in geological exploration and then transfer mining rights. This practice is quite representative. They did it for a reason.

Since 2005, the price of mineral products has risen sharply, but the input factors of producing mineral products, especially capital and labor, have not increased correspondingly, and the taxes and fees of resources have not increased, which means that most of the profits from selected mining have been converted into capital rights and interests, far higher than the average social profits. To obtain this high profit, we must obtain the factors of production that produce this high profit, namely capital, labor and resources. Among them, China is not short of capital and labor, what it really lacks is mineral resources. In this way, there is a competition for mining rights, which leads to the high price of mining rights, so people's expectation of the expected return of mining rights is particularly high. In this regard, the holders of social capital have seen it, and so have local governments. Moreover, local governments not only see that it can bring considerable income, but also see that it can stimulate the development of local economy. This is the driving force for local governments to use financial funds to engage in geological prospecting.

If local governments don't return such high mining rights, they will be replaced by social capital, which will lead to vicious competition of social capital and even breed corruption and trading of power and money. Therefore, the problem is not high income, but how to deal with the root causes of this high income. The shortage of mineral resources is actually a shortage of mineral resources as assets, and mineral resources assets are composed of the value created by mining rights investment and the natural value of mineral resources. Of these two values, the real shortage is not the investment of mining rights, but natural mineral resources. It is precisely this scarce resource that is the cheapest in reality, and its owner can only charge 0.0% compensation for mineral products income. Therefore, all the income generated by the shortage has been taken away by mining rights investors, or squeezed by mining rights investors. In this case, it is conceivable that if local governments do not control mining rights, they will also be squeezed by social capital. Therefore, there are only two ways to solve this problem:

(1) Reasonable compensation for the share of mineral resources as pure natural resources in mineral products income as soon as possible can not only promote the conservation and rational utilization of resources by economic means, but also increase the property income owned by the whole people.

(2) Under the condition of reasonable compensation for mineral resources, the price of mining rights will gradually fall back to the value created by itself. At this time, if the local government is still willing to invest in prospecting, it can operate through the sponsored exploration company as one of the members of the "business with"; Otherwise, it must be positioned according to the "geological exploration fund" stipulated by the state, and the funds for "connecting" and "adjusting" geological exploration are insufficient, so it is impossible to compete with social funds for profit.