The Philippines is the world's second-largest supplier of nickel ore. Nickel ore is commonly used to make stainless steel and batteries for electric cars.
The Philippines plans to tax nickel ore exports to encourage miners to invest in domestic processing operations rather than just exporting raw ore. Including phasing in a tax on raw nickel exports.
The idea is to follow in the footsteps of Indonesia, where a ban on nickel ore exports has attracted significant investment in the country's processing plants.
But comparisons with Indonesia are flawed, because Indonesia has more reserves to support investment in local mineral processing.
The Philippines operates 34 nickel mines, most of which are exported to China and some to Japan. But it has only two Nickel processing plants, both owned by Nickel Asia Corp, the Philippines' largest ore producer. Partial ownership.
The Philippines produced 22.5 million dry tons of nickel ore worth 46.8 billion pesos ($859 million) in the January-September period last year, compared with 27.2 million dry tons in the same period in 2021, according to newly released government data.
The proposed ore export tax is part of an overall plan to create a new fiscal regime for the mining industry to increase government revenue.
A pending legislative bill proposes paying royalties of 3 percent of the big miners' total output, a profit-based windfall tax, on top of other taxes.
