Although they say that they will ask the Ministry of Finance to increase the amount of ore rent in Serbia, the officials in the Ministry of Mining and Energy did not answer Danas’ question whether they proposed how much that fee should be increased.
Zorana Mihajlovic, the Minister of Mining and Energy, recently announced that such a request was sent to the relevant Ministry of Finance, speaking at a public debate on the amendments to the Law on Mining and Geological Research.
The amount of ore rent in Serbia ranges from three to seven percent of income, in Croatia 10 percent, in Hungary and Romania 12 percent, in Slovenia 18 percent and in Russia 22 percent of income.
If the Ministry of Finance adopts the request of the Ministry of Mining and Energy and approves an increase in the ore rent for companies engaged in the exploitation or exploration of ores in Serbia, it will still not apply to Russian Gazpromneft, the owner of the Oil Industry of Serbia.
At the moment, NIS pays a lower amount of ore rent than other companies operating in Serbia, in the amount of three percent. This was specified in the Agreement between the governments of Serbia and the Russian Federation on cooperation in the field of oil and gas economy from January 25, 2008.
The agreement stipulates that it will remain so until the end of the period of Gazpromneft’s investments in NIS, ie until the end of 2023.
The expert public is of the opinion that the decision to raise the ore rent in Serbia is good because it is at a very low level and it is necessary to increase it.
After the importance of the agreement expires, which makes it impossible at the moment, a higher ore rent should be introduced to the Russian company that owns NIS, experts believe.
This is also confirmed by the privatization advisor Branko Pavlovic.
– Ore rent should not be low, but at the level it is in in other countries that prescribe it. Accordingly, it should be increased here in Serbia as well. Also, the increased ore rent should serve for the remediation of major environmental problems that arise during the exploration and exploitation of ores – says our interlocutor.
He adds that Gazpromneft should not be an exception, and that when the current agreement expires, which envisages a strict amount of ore rent, it should be increased for that company as well, in the amount of “prescribed ore rent in Russia”.
The Ministry of Mining and Energy told Danas that, having in mind the upcoming amendments to the Law on Mining and Geological Research, as well as the participation of the mining sector as one of the most important in industrial production, the Law on Fees for fees for geological research and exploitation, ie fees for the use of resources and reserves of mineral raw materials, send to the Ministry of Finance an initiative to change the amount of the fee, with the aim of providing larger funds in the Serbian budget coming from the mining sector.
– During the drafting of amendments to the Law on Mining, experiences and good practice in the countries of the region as well as in the leading countries of the world in the field of mining were analyzed. The analysis revealed that four types of fee calculation and base determination are used in the world, different rates and amounts of calculation that depend on the fiscal regime in certain countries where the amount of profit tax is different and ranges from 15 to 35 percent. The practice of some countries is to increase the amount of compensation with an increased volume of exploited ore or metal content. The value of Serbia’s mineral wealth is more than 200 billion dollars, and the goal is to use that wealth in a sustainable way, to contribute to economic development and growth, and to make it environmentally responsible, and finally, to see the effects of that in the budget. Ore rent in Serbia today is by far the lowest in relation to all surrounding countries, and for that reason the Ministry of Mining and Energy, in addition to better regulation of fees under its jurisdiction, will also propose to the Ministry of Finance an increase in so-called ore rent as a reason to value our mineral wealth less as a country – the Ministry of Mining and Energy states, Danas reports.
