Mining-related expenditures are expected to explode this year, in what the Yukon Chamber of Mines is calling the best year since the heydays of a decade ago.

According to results of its annual survey of mining companies, spending will break the $50-million mark for the first time since the record exploration year of $56 million in 1996, during the staking rush in the Finlayson district.

Figures released this morning indicate there'll be $39.02 million spent in exploration around the territory this year, and $11.5 million in the development of a mine site or mining sites.

Joanne Hainer, the chamber's executive officer, said the results are based on contacting 79 of the 80 companies on the survey list, of which 46 are returning to the Yukon to work this summer.

Chamber president Scott Casselman said this morning the $50.5-million forecast doesn't include anything that might arise with the effort to sell and restart the United Keno Hill silver mines in the Elsa area.

Spending, he emphasized, is not focused on one particular metal, but goes right across the board, from base metals like zinc to precious metals like gold.

'It is spread amongst all the commodities; all the prices are up,' he said. 'Everything is up and because of that, companies are able to raise money quite readily.

'A lot of investment has been flowing into the mining sector. The increasing price of fuel creates inflation and drives commodity prices up.'

Energy, Mines and Resources Minister Archie Lang was predicting during the past winter another rise in exploration expenditures, following January's annual mining conference in Vancouver.

Exploration expenditures last year hit $22 million, representing a second straight annual increase, following the record-low year of just over $6 million in 2002.

Lang had predicted another increase with expenditures reaching $35 million to $30 million, and possibly even more.

Asked about the reliability of the survey results, Hainer quipped she was off by $34,000 on a $22-million year last year.

Casselman acknowledged that securing the necessary labour force is now a concern for companies. There was a general loss of workers skilled in the exploration and mining industry when the industry took a nosedive in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

There are, he pointed out, more training courses planned for the end of May to expand the size of the skilled labour force for the exploration industry. Anybody who graduates, he suggested, is quite likely going to walk into a job.

His own company has been on a hiring program for the last 18 months, and likely will be hiring out of the training programs.

'It's going to be a very busy year.'