(Bloomberg) — The man who early polling suggests will be Chile’s next president plans to raise mining taxes in coordination with neighboring nations and take equity stakes in copper mines in a bid to retain more mineral wealth.
Daniel Jadue, the current front-runner in polls for November’s elections in Chile, wants to align mining rules with Peru, Argentina and Bolivia so they don’t compete for investments, he said in an interview Wednesday.
Like Indonesia has done, he also plans to renegotiate with foreign companies to take stakes in their assets in what would be the industry’s biggest disruption since U.S.-owned mines were nationalized to form Codelco in the 1970s.
If Jadue wins office he would become Chile’s first ever Communist Party president, ratcheting up regulatory risks for global miners like BHP Group and Anglo American Plc.
A rewriting of mining rules in a country that accounts for a third of the world’s copper could temper future projects needed to fill supply gaps of a crucial metal in the transition away from fossil fuels.
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