Rio Tinto seems reassured enough by the federal government’s changes to the proposed new mining tax (MRRT) to begin investing in Australian mines again.
Tom Albanese the CEO of Rio Tinto said that while the changes to the mining tax are not perfect they do allow the company to make investments in the country.
He said that they wanted to have the ability to continue to invest in Australia. The global mining giant had frozen all fresh investment in the Australian mining industry due to the uncertainty surrounding the mining tax. Last week they made the first announcement of fresh investments in Australia.
They intend to spend $13 billion over the next 18 months thanks to the strong demand of iron ore products by China. Despite the global economic uncertainty and the delays over the MRRT the company has generated over $10 billion cash flow over the last six months.
The strong, long term positive trend for Asian demand of products that Rio Tinto produces has seen to that. Mr Albanese said Rio would like to increase its Pilbara iron ore operations from 220 million tonnes to 330 million tonnes in the next five years and further past 2016.