Committee to recommend ore royalty revision to centre soon

A three-member committee set up by the Orissa government, chaired by the finance secretary will recommend to the centre measures for revision of ore royalty rates. The committed would suggest measures within a month.

The decision to format the committee  was taken at a meeting held on Saturday under the chairmanship of the state chief secretary B K Patnaik.  

''The committee will give its recommendations to the Centre within a month. It will also take views of experts. Earlier, the state government had urged the Centre to revise royalty rates of all minerals. We had also requested the Centre to direct Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) to ensure that iron ore prices in the state are at par with the national average,'' Patnaik said in Bhubaneshwar.

In a recent move, the union ministry of mines set up a study group led by additional secretary, for revision of royalty rates and rates of dead rent for minerals. The dead rent of a mine is the rent fixed for mines irrespective of of its profitability that has to be paid, whether the minerals are being extracted from it or not.

According to the state government's demand, the royalty rate needed to be revised to tha ad-valorem basis for all minerals and be raised to at least 20 per cent to ensure that the state got a fair share from its mineral wealth.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik had also demanded imposition of mineral resources rent tax at the rate of 50 per cent of super normal profits made by the miners.

The royalty rate for iron ore and chromite at present stands at 10 per cent of sale price on ad-valorem basis while for manganese ore, it is 4.2 per cent of the sale price.