BOLIVIA: Approves Hikes on Oil and Gas Companies

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12230

BOGOTÁ, Colombia, May 6 - ­ Bolivia’s Congress has approved new, steep tax hikes on oil and gas companies, breaking an eight-month impasse that saw President Carlos Mesa’s government nearly toppled by relentless protests.

The law, ostensibly aimed at placating a restive populace that contends multinational companies are plundering Bolivia’s resources, satisfies almost no one. Foreign oil companies and Mr. Mesa said investment would shrivel up.

Powerful indigenous groups, some calling for the gas industry to be nationalized, promised more protests.

The lower house of Congress passed the hydrocarbons law, as it is known, late Thursday night in a tense session punctuated by heated charges and countercharges. In a vote of 59 to 48, it left in place an 18 percent royalty, but created a 32 percent non-deductible tax on production.

Foreign energy companies, which flocked to Bolivia in the late 1990’s to develop Bolivia’s gas deposits, Latin America’s second-largest after those in Venezuela, are also required to sign new contracts with the government that conform with the new law.

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[brainshrub]

1. They will probably squander the money to help lift up the poor and

build schools. Damn Chavez & Lula for showing them that it can be done.

Everyone knows that the only people who know how to use a nations resources are the elites.

[Jose Diablo]

2. The horror, the horror

Next thing you know, they will want to be able to vote, have a say in the government and ,gasp, be able to form unions.

This trend must be stopped. It may even catalyze working people right here in the good old USA.