DPRK eases fees for investors

According to Yonhap:

North Korea has taken steps to attract more overseas investors by scrapping extra land use fees and introducing selective import rules that can help foreign-owned companies maintain a market share, a Chinese newspaper said Friday.

According to the Jilin Newspaper, the official daily of China’s Jilin Province, a North Korean official promoted the new foreign-investor friendly measures during a recent trade exposition held in the city of Changchun.

“We revised pertinent laws and regulations so as to relegate land use fees, which have been paid annually by foreign-invested companies to their (North) Korean partners that loan the land,” Yun Yong-sok, a senior official at the international investment department of the North’s Ministry of Foreign Trade, was quoted by the paper as saying at the expo. North Korea’s Radio Pyongyang reported a delegation’s trip to the Chinese expo on Aug. 26.

Foreign investors have so far paid annual land use fees to the North Korean government in addition to a one-off lease payment, which will be still levied after the revisions.

The measures come as North Korea faces tightening international sanctions over its May nuclear test. The U.N. sanctions ban North Korea’s arms trade, a major source of income for the impoverished country, and closely scrutinize cash flows to the North.

North Korea also introduced “state support measures,” such as banning imports of goods that are already produced in adequate quantities within the North by foreign companies to ensure investors’ profits, Yun was quoted as saying.

Foreign companies that invest in science and technology in the North will get additional tax incentives, but those who take North Korean minerals, timber or fish abroad will be levied a new “resource tax” to protect the country’s natural resources, Yun added.

Read the full story here:
N. Korea boosts incentives for foreign investors
Yonhap
9/4/2009

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