After more than four years of processing, the Mining Royalty law was enacted last August, an initiative promoted by the current government and supported transversally, which aims to use resources from large-scale mining to enhance the development of the regions.
In the coming days, resources will begin to be collected from this new tax scheme, which is focused on the largest companies in the mining sector, and which are those operators whose sales come from more than 50% of copper, and with a higher production. to 50,000 metric tons of fine copper (TMCF) per year.
Of this collection, some US$ 450 million will be distributed to promote the development of the country’s regions and communes through three funds: Regional Fund for Productivity and Development, aimed at all regional governments, with the objective of financing plans and programs that encourage regional development investment projects, and promote scientific and technological investment, and whose fiscal contribution will be 225 million dollars annually; Fund for territorial equity, which considers an investment of 170 million dollars to support territorial equity in order to benefit the 302 most vulnerable communes that are most dependent on the Common Municipal Fund (FCM); and the Mining Communes Fund, which considers US$55 million for those municipalities that maintain within their territories activities directly related to mining activity, such as deposits, smelters and refineries, tailings, ports, among others, which was specified via indication.
FCM dependency
Through the Fund for Territorial Equity, 20 communes in the Ñuble region – all, except for Chillán – will receive a total of more than $8 billion.
Marcelo Ojeda, mayor of Pinto, said that the resources that are going to come in, “are very favorable and important for us, especially for communes like ours, which are rural, small communes, with few resources in the municipality. This obviously comes to alleviate a little the needs that the community has, and for us, as a tourist commune, one of the largest in the region, it is obviously going to be very useful to us,” he stated.
Ojeda highlighted that “we will be able to promote tourism, social aid, because these resources are available to us, and that is appreciated. We are happy for the new SMEs that are also starting out in our commune, and obviously this is going to help them to be able to get ahead,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Quirihue, Richard Irribarra, stated that the Royalty funds “will be of great help to us, since we are a commune that is 85% dependent on the Municipal Common Fund. In addition, being a freely available fund, it will help finance investment projects directly for the community, also in education and health, which today is very difficult to execute due to the lack of resources that all rural municipalities have, so Therefore, they will be of great help,” he expressed.
Regarding the supervision of the use of these resources, an issue that has arisen due to cases of corruption detected in some municipalities; Irribarra said that “all public resources are supervised by the Comptroller General of the Republic. It is always good that the good use of public resources is monitored,” he said.
