Reuters
Côte d’Ivoire’s parliament has approved a new tax on gold profits, a parliament official said on Friday, despite industry objections that the levy could stifle development of the country’s budding mining sector.
The law was passed on Thursday as part of a bill modifying the 2012 budget.
“The bill modifying the fiscal annex of the 2012 budget was voted on … It was approved,” Marius Ndri, the director of legislative services for the National Assembly, said.
Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s top cocoa producer, is a relatively small, but growing gold producer and is pushing to expand its long-neglected mining sector to help fund post-war reconstruction after a brief armed conflict last year ended a decade of political crisis.
The government proposed a new tax in September on what it termed “super profits”, saying it would be applied for 2012 and yield some 40-billion CFA francs ($79.8-million) in additional income to the state.