The Alcantara Group’s Sarangani Energy Corp. on Friday broke ground on its 200-megawatt coal-fired plant project, which is estimated to cost $400 million to build and reduce electricity rates by as much as P1 per kilowatt-hour over the long term, officials said here.

The Chamber of Mines urged the government to put small-scale miners under the same stringent regulations as the bigger companies as part of a policy reform that the private sector has been advocating. “This [small-scale mining] is one of the roadbloc...