NOUVELLES MESURES DE POLITIQUE FISCALE POUR LE SECTEUR MINIER FACE AU COVID-19

This fact sheet provides guidance for governments on implementing fiscal policy measures to support the mining sector during the COVID-19 crisis, emphasizing targeted aid, strict eligibility criteria, and specific conditions for state support.

• Governments should determine whether fiscal measures should apply to the entire mining sector or be targeted at the most affected companies. Priority for tax relief should be given to existing mines rather than new, uncertain investments, and aid should be restricted to locally registered companies with proper authorizations rather than foreign entities or parent companies in other jurisdictions.
• Eligibility for government aid should be limited to companies demonstrating severe financial distress. Indicators of such distress include negative project cash flows for over a year, sharp declines in market prices for produced minerals, inability to meet tax obligations, quarantine-related closures, risk of mass layoffs, or risk of bankruptcy. Any mine or parent company paying dividends in 2020 is ineligible for tax relief.
• State financial aid should be conditional. Recipient companies should be required to retain their workforce without salary reductions, suspend bonuses and raises for senior executives, cancel shareholder dividends (except those linked to state holdings), abandon artificial tax avoidance schemes, and adopt transparent, fair transfer pricing and mineral sales pricing based on transparent benchmarks.
• Recommended short-term fiscal relief options include the deferral or temporary exemption of social charges, accelerated VAT credit refunds (or zero-rating for extractive industry products), exemptions on import duties for health-related equipment and specific non-local inputs, and immediate tax deductions or credits for health-related expenditures. Deferring or exempting mining royalties is suggested only as a last resort for projects whose viability is threatened by price drops, potentially in exchange for increased state equity or as debts to be repaid.
• Certain measures are advised against: corporate income tax exemptions are deemed irrelevant because a company must be profitable to pay such tax, and withholding tax exemptions should be avoided as they are easy for governments to collect, which is critical given the resource shortages in developing countries.

APA

International Institute for Sustainable Development (2020). NOUVELLES MESURES DE POLITIQUE FISCALE POUR LE SECTEUR MINIER FACE AU COVID-19. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/mining-tax-policy-covid-19-key-points-fr.pdf

Chicago

International Institute for Sustainable Development. NOUVELLES MESURES DE POLITIQUE FISCALE POUR LE SECTEUR MINIER FACE AU COVID-19. 2020. https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/mining-tax-policy-covid-19-key-points-fr.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=International Institute for Sustainable Development |title=NOUVELLES MESURES DE POLITIQUE FISCALE POUR LE SECTEUR MINIER FACE AU COVID-19 |date=2020 |url=https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/mining-tax-policy-covid-19-key-points-fr.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{internationalinstituteforsustainabledevelopment2020nouvelles, author = {{International Institute for Sustainable Development}}, title = {{NOUVELLES MESURES DE POLITIQUE FISCALE POUR LE SECTEUR MINIER FACE AU COVID-19}}, institution = {International Institute for Sustainable Development}, year = {2020}, url = {https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/mining-tax-policy-covid-19-key-points-fr.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }