Albania halves royalty mining tax to boost processing industry

The Albanian government has decided to cut the royalty mining tax on metallic minerals processed from by 6 percent to 3 percent as a way to give a new stimulus to this mineral processing industry, sources from the Albanian energy ministry said Monday.

Besides metallic minerals, the government is also planning to create tax incentives for bitumen as there is a high demand for such products in the international markets, the sources said.

According to energy ministry experts, such incentives, included in the fiscal package 2017, aim at promoting domestic processing industry and therefore it value in the economy and employment in Albania.

They added that another reason for undertaking such new incentives is to support the industry from the risk of minerals' price lowering in foreign markets.

According to experts, these measures are strongly needed by businesses operating in this industry because the latter have long been complaining about the serious difficulties they are facing with due to lower prices in international markets.

The mining sector in Albania includes a growing number of small and medium-sized companies and few large industrial companies. According to official statistics, the total number of mining licenses is 640, where 40 of them are given to foreign-owned companies.

Major foreign companies operating in Albanian mining industry are mainly from Turkey, Canada, China and Italy, statistics show. Endit