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Congo to Cut Taxes for Miners to Counter Slump in Commodities 2008-12-10 16:29:37.730 GMT


By Franz Wild
    Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Democratic Republic of Congo will cut costs for miners and wrap up a review of mining contracts to help counter the effects of the global financial crisis and the slump in demand for commodities.
The central African country will cut export and import taxes for miners and drop the cost of factory operating licenses to $5 million from $50 million, Deputy Mines Minister Victor Kasongo said today in an interview in the capital, Kinshasa.
Full details of the cuts will be available tomorrow, he added.
“Congo depends on the mines and the financial crisis has hit the mines hard,” Kasongo said. “We want people to export minerals so we people can keep working.”
Up to 300,000 people will lose their jobs by year’s end in the southern Katanga province, home to a third of the world’s cobalt reserves and 4 percent of all copper, according to the region’s mines ministry. About 45 out of 75 companies with treatment plants have stopped operating because metal prices have plummeted.
Congo’s government will next week announce the final results of a review of 61 mining contracts, aimed at boosting state revenue in the sector, Kasongo said.
“The government will pronounce itself definitively,” he said. “The executive will have spoken.”