Senator reiterates need for a salmon royalty
It may come as a surprise that the Regional Senator of Chile’s Tenth Region, the heart of country’s salmon industry, is also protagonist for the enactment of a new law directed at trimming the fat off the seemingly too wealthy salmon production companies. Camilo Escalona, also President of the Socialist Party and the Senate House Commission, couldn’t irritate the national salmon producers more with his proposal of a special territorial use law, which would place a Regional tax on salmon producers to help finance the maintenance of roadways, ports, water quality and other environmental factors that are impacted by the salmon industry. According to Aqua.cl, Escalona stated in yesterday’s Congress discussion, “May I reiterate that the Government should support a law that allows for the establishment of a real and effective licensing on the salmon industry, or a special territorial use law, popularly known as a royalty, on this industry.” Chile’s mining industry is the only other industry in the county subjected to such a royalty, and parliamentarians of the mining regions are lobbying for regional industry equality – if mining companies have to pay, so should other natural resource industries.
