Copper smelters lobby China to end tolls

Chinese copper smelters hope by the second half of the year to be able to import some concentrate tax-free, a move that could boost Chinese exports of the metal and dampen global prices but push up the local market.

Smelters said on Wednesday they had been lobbying Beijing hard in recent weeks for a resumption of a regime that until 2006 allowed concentrate to enter the country tax-free for processing or "tolling" if it was re-exported as refined copper.

That policy was scrapped by China two years ago in an attempt to keep more copper at home and to cut power consumption by the copper refining industry, which is highly energy intensive.

Without the policy, smelters have been required to pay standard value-added tax on concentrate imports of 13 percent and an export tax on refined copper exports of 10 percent, charges that dramatically reduced China's role in the international tolling industry.

But smelters hope to be able to revive tax-free processing.

"We are hoping that we may be allowed to resume processing trade in the second half of the year," a manager at a large smelter in Anhui province said.

A trade manager at a northeastern smelter agreed:

"A few departments are studying our request more seriously."