Ollanta Humala, President-elect of Peru, fulfilled a campaign promise Thursday in announcing his government's intention to hit mining companies with higher royalty taxes.
Humala, who was elected in July, campaigned on a promise to tax mining company profits and distribute them to the poor — a development that had investors and mining company CEOs running for cover in a country that is the world's second largest producer of copper and the sixth biggest gold miner. Companies now pay between 1% and 3% in royalties.
There have been many warnings of tyre shortages and now Eurotire, an emerging global leader in the OTR tire industry, has announced it will increase prices by up to 9.8% on all its OTR bias tyres and up to 11.5% on all
its OTR radial tyres globally effective September 5, 2011.
Reuters reports 50,000 protesters battled police in Chile's capital on Thursday, the second day of a two-day strike against unpopular President Sebastian Pinera.
A recent poll put the right-wing leader's approval rating at only 26%, below even that of dictator General Pinochet, who ruled the country for 17 years from 1973. The protests follows recent strikes in the copper sector over pay and a campaign against a massive coal mine on an island in Patagonia amid accusations that billionaire Pinera’s shareholding in the developer, Copec, constitutes a serious conflict of interest.
FT reports iron ore prices hit a three-month high above $180 a tonne on Thursday as supply outages and strong demand from China underpinned the steelmaking commodity.
Started in 2008, derivatives trading in iron ore is up fourfold this year after setting a record in July, but he world’s top three miners – BHP Billiton, Vale and Rio Tinto – control nearly 70% of the 1 billion tonne annual seaborne trade and dominate price talks.
BHP this week announced record profits on back of earnings from iron ore, its biggest division, which jumped 122% to $13.3 billion and CEO Marius Kloppers said unlike the situation in coal, global iron ore supplies are being 'overestimated'.
Interfax reports Russia state-owned diamond miner Alrosa is up 22% on the country's trading board for unlisted stocks since it was first quoted there on July 18. The price of US$31,495 per share, implies a market value of $8.6 billion.
Alrosa accounts for around 25% of world output and for the full year sales of $4.7 billion is expected. The secretive firm has been feeding the market more information recently in anticipation of a 2012 public offering that seeks to raise up to $3 billion.
24/7 Wall St says the global diamond mining industry may be one of the world’s best-kept secrets and diamond mining is not unlike the oil business, where about 100 massive fields supply about half the world’s oil.
Gold for December delivery fell more than $50 to $1,710 an ounce in afternoon trade in London on Thursday, bring its losses since the record high of Monday to 10%, the worst slump since March 2008.
On Wednesday, the Chicago stock exchange operator CME followed a move by the Shanghai Gold Exchange by increasing the margin requirement as a way to “ensure adequate collateral coverage.” The minimum cash deposit to borrow from brokers to trade gold futures will rise 27% to $9,450 per 100-ounce contract at the end of today. Silver slumped as much as 35% in London in about three weeks from its April 25 record of $49.79 an ounce after CME announced margin increases.