The expert assessed the possible budget revenues from the coal export duty

MOSCOW, 15 Sep — PRIME. The state budget can attract 180-200 billion rubles if it introduces an export duty on coal, Leonid Khazanov, an independent expert in industry and energy, told RIA Novosti.

Earlier Thursday, the newspaper Kommersant, citing sources, reported that the government was considering imposing an export duty on coal, similar to fertilizers. As the newspaper notes, it is preliminarily supposed to introduce a cut-off price, above which the duty takes effect.

“Then (in the case of the introduction of duties – ed.), the amount of revenue from them to the state budget could be about 180-200 billion rubles, based on the volume of coal exports of 200 million tons per year and the current parity of the dollar and the Russian currency,” Khazanov said. .

He believes that the introduction of a duty on the export of coal abroad may not have the best effect on the activities of companies due to the different mining and geological conditions of the deposits they develop and “differences in the methods of coal mining, in particular, mines with reserves close to to exhaustion.” In addition, according to the expert, if the duty rates “are equal to 50-60 dollars per ton, a number of enterprises can be expected to stop.”

Khazanov also added that now the situation in the Russian coal industry is quite difficult due to several factors. “On the one hand, world coal prices are high and are at the level of about $444 per ton, on the other hand, coal exports to Asia have decreased, on the third, there is a catastrophic shortage of coal in Europe … At the same time, domestic coal companies had to change logistics routes and therefore, some of them have increased the cost of its delivery,” he concluded.