Tax for oil concessionaries
10/01/2014

“Bankers Petroleum”, the company that has most of the Albanian oil industry under concession, says that they are negotiating with the government about the effects of the new taxes.

The government decided to use excise tax for the oil sub-products that the concessionary companies import for their own needs.

According to the Ministry of Finances, this would bring 35 million USD for 2014, money that would be taken from the concessionaries. But through a press release announced on their website, “Bankers Petroleum” quotes their president saying: “The company is negotiating with Albanian high rank officials, to fully evaluate the impact of the new laws in order to reach an agreement that would compensate the financial effects, a right that comes from the concessionary agreement that we have with Albania”.

Top Channel has learned that the Ministry of Energy is tasked with the negotiations. Official sources from this Ministry confirm the news, but say that no concrete discussion has been held so far. According to these sources, the meetings are expected to be held in the days to come with all companies that operate in the oil industry and that are affected by the new taxes. The budget contribution of the companies that exploit our national assets has been a hot political debate by the Socialists when they were in opposition.

After coming to power, the left government planned a draft that imposed excise on all concessionary imports in all phases of research and exploitation.

Only two days later, the Ministry of Finances modified the draft in Parliament by excluding imports that are in the researching phase. What it remains to be seen now is the result of the new negotiations. Will there be other changes in the law that imposes excise over the concessionary, or the government will keep it unchanged?

Confidential sources from the Ministry of Energy say that one of the concessionary requests is of recognizing the new taxes as deductible spending for calculating the profit.

So far, the companies that exploit oil in Albania have not paid any tax on profit, since they say that they haven’t recovered their investments yet. A few weeks ago, the Minister of Finances declared in Parliament that the budget for 2014 will not benefit any tax on profit from oil, the exports of which were almost 500 million USD last year, or 4% of the Gross Domestic Product.