State Duma may fail to approve added income tax bill in 2017

MOSCOW, Oct 30 (PRIME) -- Russia’s State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, may have no time to approve a bill on introduction of an added income tax in the oil industry in all the three required readings in 2017, Pavel Zavalny, head of the State Duma’s energy committee, told reporters on Monday.

“There is no information that the government has studied this (bill), this is why we are already falling behind the deadline. We may approve it on the basis of an oilfield profit tax, which was submitted (to the State Duma) a couple of years ago as an option and then make all the necessary changes during the second reading,” Zavalny said.

Still, the lawmakers have not made such a decision. “It would be right to do it like that, but no decision has been made so far. We are waiting for it, or we will lose a year,” he said.

A pilot project to introduce an added income tax for some fields should be launched from 2018. Oil companies Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegas, and RussNeft have filed bids for the projects in February with a combined annual oil production of about 7 million tonnes, and in October Rosneft submitted requests to include 15 fields with a combined output of 6.13 million tonnes into the project.

End