ALMATY :Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev ordered his government on Tuesday to extract greater tax revenue from the mining sector which he said was profiting from higher metals prices.
The price of uranium, the metal that fuels nuclear power plants, jumped last week after the unrest in Kazakhstan that was initially sparked by protests against a hike in fuel prices but widened into what the authorities have since called an attempted coup d'etat. "I am ordering the government to come up with a plan additional revenues to the budget. In exchange we can provide large incentives for the exploration and development of new deposits for large mining and other companies."
It was therefore not immediately clear how Tokayev's plan might affect foreign mining and commodity companies such as Glencore, Rio Tinto and French nuclear fuel firm Orano that do business in the Central Asian country.