The National Assembly Standing Committee (NASC) on December 10 approved the government proposal to increase tax rates on a number of different natural resources.

A session of the NA Standing Committee.

According to a government report, metal minerals are non-renewable resources and currently their remaining deposits are in rapid decline.

Therefore, it is necessary to increase the tax rates on these resources to discourage the export of raw minerals and conserve resources for deeper processing in the future.

Higher rates will help strengthen State management over the mining of the country’s natural resources and contribute to the protection and effective exploitation of resources, said the NASC.

Accordingly, the tax rates on manganese rose from 11% to 14%, lead and zinc from 10% to 15% from January 1, 2016.

From January 1, 2017, the rates on iron ore will also be increased by 12% to 14%, titanium 16% to 18%, gold 15% to 17%, tungsten 18% to 20%, copper 13% to 15% and platinum, silver, tin by 10% to 12%.

The Standing Committee also increased the tax rates on non-metal resources including sand, granite, coal, diamond, ruby sapphire and marble.

For natural forest products, the NASC kept the tax rates on timber in categories I, II and III and reduced the rates on other types of timber.

With these new rates, tax revenues on metal minerals are projected to increase by VND125 billion (US$5.5 million) compared with 2014 and non-metal minerals by VND2,172 billion (US$95.6 million).

Nhan Dan