Representatives from leading mining companies and officials from the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) today opened trading at Toronto Stock Exchange.

The annual PDAC convention is taking place this week in Toronto.

TSX Group says it is home to 60% of the world’s public mining companies and Canada has the world’s largest mining analyst community that covers both issuers on both the TSX and TSX Venture Exchange.

“Our exchanges have become the world’s leading markets for raising equity capital for mining and as a result we attract numerous international mining participants,” said Richard Nesbitt, CEO of TSX Group, in a release. “Of the over 8,500 projects being undertaken by mining companies that we list, nearly a third are outside of North America.”

TSX Group has seen a total of eight new mining listings on the exchanges in the first two months of 2006. In aggregate, these new listings bring an additional $430 million to the value of mining securities listed on TSX and TSX-V. Currently the TSX Group mining sector that is home to 1,192 listed mining companies with a quoted market value of over $207 billion.

In 2005, there was $166.7 billion in shares trading in the mining issues on the TSX and TSX-V.