China imposing a sales levy on miners

China is expected to slap a sales levy on domestic and foreign-funded mining firms to curb the growing waste of precious state-owned mineral resources.

Song Ruixiang, China’s vice-minister of mining, says that, beginning in April, all 9,000 state and 250,000 collective mining enterprises will have to pay the government an average 1.18% of their sales income from mineral products.

The levy, which also applies to foreign-funded firms, will “put an end to the long-term, irrational policy of letting mining operators freely exploit and often waste precious state resources,” Song was quoted as saying by China Daily.

While Chinese law explicitly affirms the state’s ownership of all mineral resources, the free tapping of those resources has implied that mining firms owned whatever they dug out.

“The fee will serve as economic leverage through which to protect valuable minerals and secure the state’s economic rights over them,” Song said.