Glencore reveals tax payout – by Staff (Sudbury Star – July 16, 2016)

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Glencore paid the government of Canada $5.65 million US in taxes last year for its Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations. The figure is contained in a report released by the miner called Glencore: Payments to Government 2015.

Glencore is one of the world’s largest global diversified natural resource companies, and a major producer and trader of more than 90 commodities, it says on its website. In Sudbury, Glencore operates two underground nickel-copper mines: Nickel Rim South, which the company says is Sudbury’s largest mining operation, and Fraser Mine.

Its Strathcona concentrator receives ore from those two mines and from third-party custom feed ores, and produces two concentrate streams, a nickel-copper concentrate that goes to the Sudbury smelter and a copper concentrate that goes to Glencore Copper for smelting and refining.

Glencore’s Sudbury smelter processes Glencore Nickel nickel-copper concentrate from Sudbury, Raglan and XNA (Australia) operations. It also processes custom-feed materials in the form of concentrates and secondary products.

Glencore’s Sudbury INO, as it is known, employs 1,300 people full-time.

Glencore chief financial officer Steve Kalmin said the report is the company’s first on its economic contributions and payments to governments.

“We are committed to the highest standards of corporate governance and transparency and support increased transparency around the redistribution and reinvestment of such payments,” Kalmin said in his introduction to the report.

Glencore made $5 billion in government contributions in 2015, including $2.86 billion relating to EU Directive payments.

The report publishes the payments it made project by project, country by country, and is aligned with the reporting requirements of Chapter 10 of the EU Accounting Directive.

According to KPMG’s website, Chapter 10 of the EU Accounting Directive, requires public-interest and non-public large companies in the EU, with activity involving exploration, prospecting, development and extraction of minerals or oil and gas, or the logging of primary forests, to disclose certain payments to government on a country by country basis globally.

Kalmin said the taxes and royalties Glencore pays to governments often represent a significant proportion of their incomes.

“Our activities within our host countries enable governments to monetise their assets,” said Kalmin in his introduction.

“The tax and royalty payments we make in connection with our activities can be used to provide the citizens of those countries with government services and infrastructure to improve their quality of life.”

Taxes, royalties and fees are one element of Glencore’s economic and social contribution, he said. In 2015, Glencore’s total economic contribution was $25.2 billion, comprising taxes and royalties, employees’ wages and benefits, and payments to local suppliers, it says in the report.

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