Venezuela’s National Assembly on Thursday passed a new mining law, opening its doors to private entrepreneurship as the nation’s socialist regime seeks to attract U.S. and other foreign investment after decades of socialist restrictions.
Bloomberg Línea reports that the Venezuelan parliament, controlled by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), unanimously voted to approve the new 131-article legislation that substitutes Venezuela’s nearly three decade-old and notoriously restrictive mining legal framework.
The new law is reportedly described to be part of “acting President” Delcy Rodríguez’s efforts to offer “legal guarantees and a more flexible tax regime” to international investors, particularly those from the United States. The socialist-controlled National Assembly is led by Delcy’s brother, Jorge Rodríguez.
“I would like to thank the National Assembly for its unanimous approval of the Organic Mining Law, a fundamental tool for modernizing, regulating, and promoting mining in our country,” Rodríguez wrote on social media. “This law enhances legal certainty, attracts investment, and will boost mineral wealth in the interest of national development.”
Per Reuters, the new law, currently pending Delcy Rodríguez’s signature to go into effect, repeals regulations from 1999 and 2015 and allows domestic, foreign, state-owned, and private companies to exploit gold and other “strategic minerals,” with the possibility to grant concessions up to a maximum of 30 years, with subsequent ten-year renewal extensions.
The legislation also includes provisions to support foreign investment, and permits access to international arbitration, in addition to a simplified tax regime and provisions granting exceptions from various existing taxes.
Venezuela’s new mining law reform comes roughly one month after U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum visited Caracas and met with Delcy Rodríguez. At the time, the “acting President” emphasized that both countries had agreed to move forward with a long-term partnership with energy as an area of cooperation — and announced that the Venezuelan regime would soon reform the nation’s mining laws.
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Sec. Burgum announced in late March that the United States had received a $100 million shipment of gold, marking the first time in 20 years that the U.S. received a shipment of that nature from the South American nation.
The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional explained that the second parliamentary debate required to pass the law took four sessions, and recounted that the now-repealed 1999 mining law was approved at the time by late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez using special powers granted by the legislature.
Earlier this year, and following the arrest of dictator Nicolás Maduro through a U.S. law enforcement operation in January, the ruling socialists also reformed the nation’s hydrocarbon laws, allowing foreign investment into the nation’s oil sector after decades of draconian socialist restrictions.
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