[miningmx.com] – FRED Gona, parliament’s mineral resources portfolio committee chairperson, said he would not relent on a plan to channel mining royalties directly into the fiscus despite criticisms from the mining sector that taxes should be ring-fenced.
At a meeting of the mineral resources portfolio committee yesterday, in which the state of the platinum industry and the prospect of amending royalties were discussed, Gona said the mining sector was “missing the point’ if it thought mine taxes should be ploughed into the mining sector.
Sapa quoted Gona as saying that the country’s mineral wealth was the national heritage of all South Africans, not just mining communities.
“Once we begin to talk about ring-fencing the money generated from the mining industry for the mining industry, then we are missing the point,” said Gona.
Asked whether the mining sector was amenable to changes in the royalty and tax regime, Roger Baxter, a senior economist at the Chamber of Mines of SA, said that he would not support the status quo and sought “”an equitable sharing of the rents”, Sapa reported.
