The independent Productivity Commission states explicitly on page 73: "The estimated effective rate of assistance from tariff and budgetary assistance for mining is negligible."
The Commission concludes: "The effective rate of assistance — net assistance per unit of value added — was around 4 per cent for the manufacturing sector, over 2 per cent for the primary production sector and less than 1 per cent for mining."
The Commission finds that the limited budgetary assistance is "mainly in the form of R&D tax concession programs and assistance through CSIRO". This investment is a fraction of the mining industry's R&D spending of more than $4.1 billion last year alone. It should also be noted that the R&D tax concession is available to all industries – not just mining.
"The Productivity Commission report provides incontrovertible evidence that Greens Party claims that the mining industry receives taxpayer subsidies are complete garbage."
The report comes just days after a report by the research wing of the Greens Party, the Australia Institute on alleged subsidies to the mining sector was exposed as containing the most basic errors, omissions and distortions.
