FG gives tax holidays to miners, set to release part of N30bn Mining Intervention Fund

The Federal Government, on Thursday, promised to give tax holidays to miners of seven minerals in the country.
Minster of Mines and Steel Development, Dr Kayode Fayemi, made the promise at a stakeholders meeting of the Association of Miners Processors of Barite (AMAPOB) and Tse Torkula Community in Guma Local Government area of Benue State.
The Minister for State Mines and Steel Development, Mr Abubarkar Bwari, also attended the meeting.
Fayemi said that out the 40 solid minerals in the country, the Federal Government was concentrating on seven minerals for full exploration.
“As a country, we have the best tax holidays worldwide, all miners have three years tax holidays from the government.
“Again, out of the 40 minerals in the country, we have selected seven strategic ones for concentration. The minerals are limestone, barytes, iron, bitumen lead and zinc.
“We also have duty free on all mining equipment”.
The minister advised miners to adequately compensate host communities for peace and healthy working condition.
“We are seriously discouraging a situation where miners fail to compensate host communities either by cash or through inequities that are resulting to unhealthy situations. We need a healthy environment to work”.
He said that the government needed to massively inject funds and create good market environment for full mining activities to take place in the country.
He said that there were serious mining activities ongoing in the country other than cement, but were not heard about until this national tour of mining sites by government.
The minister said that Benue, Nasarawa and Cross Rivers states had large quantities of barytes to satisfy the needs of the oil and gas companies.
He said that the government was likely to commenced substitution or ban importation of barytes for oil companies to patronise barytes produced locally.
Mr Mike Mku, the Vice President, Association of Miners and Processors of Barite (AMAPOB), appealed to the Federal Government to ban importation of barytes into country.
Mku said that the local processors of barytes had enough to sustain the oil and gas companies.
Mku said that his members lacked equipment, infrastructure and market to sell their products since the oil companies were currently importing barytes.
He appealed to government to leverage on local content by partnering with them for effective output in the mining sector.
Mr Gregory Tarkubu, spokesperson for the host community, promised their cooperation and support to the mining project in the community.
The minister visited Dajo Pottery, REMICO Processing Plant and Ploygaurd Investment while in the state.
Meanwhile, Fayemi has declared that the Federal Government would release part of the N30 billion mining intervention funds soon.
Fayemi disclosed this during a town hall meeting with miners as part of his nation-wide tour on Thursday in Abuja.
He said the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, had promised that the fund would soon be released.
“The finance minister told the minister of state, Abubakar Bwari and I that the fund will soon be released to the sector; we are reasonably certain that it will be released before end of the year,” he said.
He said the ministry set a template on  the categories of miners that would be supported and benefit from the fund.
The categories of miners that would benefit include the artisanal miners, those that conducted explorations but did not have resources for exploitation, states in partnership with the ministry, and for exploitation.
He said the beneficiaries were figured out based on information gathered through the miners, interaction with the states and from the ministry’s roadmap.
According to him, the N30 billion will be drawn from the Natural Resource Fund, adding that it was the first time that such amount was approved for the development of the sector.
“The fund has been there; the natural resource fund is 1.6 per cent from the federal account and it is meant for the development of agriculture, mining and water resources sectors.
President Muhammadu Buhari approved the mining intervention fund during the Federal Executive Council meeting (FEC) in October 2016.
The two ministers of the sector had embarked on a nationwide tour to all mine sites to build stakeholders’ confidence, get feedback from them, identify challenges and proffer solutions.
The ministers have  so far visited Kaduna, Lagos, Ogun, Nasarawa and Benue states.