The country has not benefited from the bauxite rush in Kuantan as there appears to be zero export duties imposed on bauxite being mined and exported out of Pahang, PKR claimed today.

Based on the party's checks at the Royal Customs and Excise Department's website, export duty for the mineral was listed as zero percent, the party's vice-president Rafizi Ramli said.

"When Pahang Menteri Besar Adnan Yaakob said the state government collected RM47 million in royalties in 2015 from bauxite mining, I checked the tariff code for bauxite at the Customs Department's website.

"What shocked and concerned me was that the export duty rate for bauxite under the code '260600000' was listed as zero percent," Rafizi told a press conference at the party headquarters in Petaling Jaya today.

The Pandan MP urged the federal government to immediately impose a 10 percent export duty on bauxite equivalent to that imposed on palm oil exports.

Federal government lost RM180 million

"If the federal government realises the impact of bauxite mining and its environmental rehabilitation costs, at the least it should set the export duty to be 10 percent.

"This would be par with the export duty for palm oil export and if that is done, the takings can be divided, 50-50 with the Pahang government, as per the Assignment of Export Duty (Mineral Ores) Act 1964 (Revised 1989)," he said.

Rafizi call upon Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak to answer in his capacity as finance minister as to whether his government had been lax in not implementing the export duty for bauxite.

"Because of this lax, the federal government may have lost at least RM180 million in export duties in 2015 alone," he said.