MOSCOW – The Russian government has submitted proposed changes to mineral extraction taxes (MET) for Russian metals firms from 2022 to the lower house of parliament, according to the draft proposals published on Thursday.
The state budget is expected to get a boost of up to 546-billion roubles ($7.5-billion) in the three years from 2022 from the changes, the government said in the draft, which was published on the parliament's website.
The taxes will affect Russian producers of steel, coking coal and fertilisers, as well as mixed ore, which Nornickel mines in Siberia,
The draft changes will now face three readings in the lower house of parliament, or Duma.
For Nornickel's mixed ore, which contains nickel, copper, platinum group metals, gold and cobalt and comes from the Siberian Krasnoyarsk region, the MET rate is proposed at 6% with a formula tied to global prices for these metals.
The payment will not be less than 2 555 roubles per a tonne of mixed ore, the draft showed.
The proposed MET rate for iron-ore is 4.8% and 1.5% for coking coal. A new excise tax on "liquid steel" - a semi-finished steel product - is proposed at 2.7%, according to the draft.
All these rates will also be part of the formula linked to global prices for these products.
The MET formula for phosphate fertilisers will be set with a coefficient of 7 instead of the current 3.5.
It would be the third tax increase for the Russian metals and mining industry since the start of the year, when the government raised the MET export tax for metals firms to boost proceeds for the pandemic-hit budget.
The government then imposed temporary export taxes on Russian steel, nickel, aluminium and copper that will cost producers $2.3-billion from August to December 2021.