a. Technical Development Department, Metal Mining Agency of Japan, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-0001, Japan
b. Department of Geosystem Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

Investigation of overseas mine developments and operations is indispensable for the Japanese metal industry, which is heavily dependant on foreign mineral resources supply. The first part of this paper provides an overview of the world metal mining industry in the 1990s focusing on globalization and sustainable development. Globalization of the mining industry has resulted in trends which include promotion of foreign investments in developing countries and merger and acquisition movements of the major mining companies. Concepts of the sustainable development and environmental issues with respect to the mining industry became important.
In the latter part of this paper, copper and gold open pit mines were studied worldwide from an economic point of view. The main points resulting from the study include
1) mines which have low ore value tend to have large mining capacity due to compensating productivity, and
2) the capacity of copper mines, even though ore reserves may be comparatively abundant, tend to be planned to postpone the mine life compared to that of gold mines.