Poland may provide the country’s sole copper producer KGHM relief next year on a 2012 tax that eats into the miner’s profits, Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz told Wprost weekly in an interview published on Monday.
The ruling Law and Justice party moved to power in last year’s elections, on among other things a promise of scrapping the levy on mining income. But the budgets for this year and next are still counting on revenue from that tax.
“We do not pull back from that promise. It is only a matter of time when we will try to ease the dimension of the tax, and perhaps then eliminate it,” Jackiewicz said.
“Definitely by the end of the government’s term, and perhaps already in 2017 there will be a serious relief,” he said.
Jackiewicz also said KGHM should keep its Chilean assets, even though PiS earlier questioned the purchase of a Canadian company that gave the Polish miner partial ownership of the Sierra Gorda copper mine and launched an investigation into whether the acquisition was justified.
“I would like us to stay in Chile, in Sierra Gorda, but this requires serious work out there and many talks – with Sumitomo, banks and probably with Chile’s government about possible relief, since we are in an extraordinary situation,” Jackiewicz said.
KGHM co-owns the Sierra Gorda mine with Japan’s Sumitomo .
source: mobile.reuters.com
