The Ministry of Economy and Energy is currently working on a new system of royalties, to allow investors’ access to a clear list of all resources in Romania, said Thursday the Minister of Economy, Alexandru Petrescu (foto), quoted by Agerpres.
„It is very important to bring clarity to the system of royalties. Now we find mentions about royalties in the petroleum act, the mining law and other legislation. I shall never stop putting myself in the position of an investor who makes a business plan. They should have access, by clicking, to a table, a very clear dashboard displaying the royalties on all Romania’s resources. They cannot do that now unless they have a consultant who is paid a lot of money to assemble the business plan,” said Alexandru Petrescu.
The first step is systematizing the information. Then, „when we understand where we stand, we can move on to step two”, to setting the royalty rates, according to the Minister of Economy.
If „royalties are at the correct level from the regional perspective, for different types of resources; if they are only in Romania, we must set a certain royalty rate. If they are found at the regional level, you should somehow harmonize them, from a commercial point of view, for us to become attractive in the region. We make this analysis now, we have an inter-ministerial group for that,” explained the Minister of Economy, quoted by Agerpres.
Completing the Law on royalties is an objective set for the first quarter of 2017, according to a statement by the Minister of Finance Viorel Stefan, made at the beginning of the year.
„We are late. For two years, we have been playing in overtime in the matter of royalties and we should stop this situation,” stated then the Minister of Finance.
In addition, the Minister of Finance promised to introduce „an additional tax of 20% on profits from the use of natural resources that are not processed in Romania (…). If the natural resource goes to a processing unit in Romania, we shall not apply this extra tax”, explained Viorel Stefan.
