Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2666 actions· ✨ 90 recent

Decreto Supremo Nº 5503, signed 17 December 2025 by the Paz administration on its first business day in office, declares a national Economic, Financial, Energy and Social Emergency and enacts a 120-article comprehensive stabilization package. Headline measures: a 15-year fiscal and legal stability guarantee for "strategic" foreign investment in mining, hydrocarbons, energy, agro-industry, infrastructure and export-manufacturing; a fast-track 30-day investment-approval procedure; 0% import tariff on industrial machinery, equipment and key inputs through 2026; accelerated depreciation for 2026 fixed-asset acquisitions (excluding extractive mining and hydrocarbons); discretionary write-off of pre-October 2025 tax interest and penalties; and elimination of fuel subsidies (with a 6-month transition price freeze). The decree restructures Bolivia's investment-incentive architecture and signals a pivot from the Morales/Arce-era resource nationalism toward foreign-capital attraction — directly material for the Salar de Uyuni lithium pipeline (CBC, Uranium One, Citic Guoan tenders).

On 5 December 2025, at the opening of the 14th Practical Nigerian Content Forum, Nigeria's Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) unveiled a USD 100 million Equity Investment Scheme to provide equity and quasi-equity financing to high-growth indigenous energy service companies, diversifying the income base of the Nigerian Content Development Fund (NCDF). NCDMB Executive Secretary Engr. Felix Omatsola Ogbe and Bank of Industry Managing Director Dr. Olasupo Olusi signed an MOU under which BOI will manage the scheme as a new product of the Nigerian Content Intervention Fund, with a single-obligor limit of USD 5 million per investment. NCDMB also reported Nigerian content (local-participation) attainment reached 61% by Q3 2025.

The Ivorian Council of Ministers adopted on 3 December 2025 the Politique Intégrée des Ressources Minérales et de l'Énergie (PIRME), a 15-year cross-sector extractive and energy industrial-policy strategy requiring CFA 38,000 billion (~USD 68bn) across three five-year phases to 2040. The policy targets doubling the mining-energy sector's GDP contribution from 7% (2022) to 14% by 2040, positioning it as the economy's second pillar after agriculture. Core mandates include a 50% local transformation target for gold, a 10 million-tonne iron-ore production target, a 500,000 bbl/day oil production target, 45% renewable energy integration, and a 38% reduction in energy-sector emissions — backed by national-content and value-addition requirements across mining, hydrocarbons, and electricity sub-sectors.

On 23 October 2025, the Council of the European Union adopted the 19th package of restrictive measures against Russia, anchored by Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2033 amending Regulation 833/2014 (sectoral sanctions), Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2035 amending Regulation 269/2014 (asset-freeze listings — 22 individuals + 42 entities, total 69 listings), and Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2041 (parallel Belarus measures). The package closes the Russian-LNG import loophole left open by the 18th package and establishes the architectural template for crypto-asset sanctions. Headline measures: (i) full prohibition on imports of Russian-origin LNG into the EU — short-term contracts banned six months from entry into force (effective 25 April 2026), long-term contracts (> 1 year, executed before 17 June 2025) phased out by 1 January 2027; (ii) full transaction ban on Rosneft and Gazprom Neft (tightening prior partial measures); (iii) five additional Russian banks added to Annex XIV transaction ban (Alfa-Bank, MTS Bank among them; effective 12 November 2025); (iv) full transaction bans on the Mir card payment system and the Faster Payments System (SBP), effective 25 January 2026; (v) first-ever EU sanctions on a stablecoin — the rouble-backed A7A5 (issuer + developer designated) — and a Paraguay-based cryptocurrency exchange used as a circumvention rail; (vi) prohibition on EU operators contracting with 11 listed Russian Special Economic Zones (Annex LII), with mandatory divestment from Alabuga (Tatarstan) and Technopolis Moscow effective 25 January 2026 — no five-year wind-down available; (vii) 45 entities added to Annex IV military end-user list (28 Russian + 17 third-country: 12 Chinese/Hong Kong, 3 Indian, 2 Thai); (viii) new export restrictions on electronic components, microelectronics, acyclic hydrocarbons, pneumatic rubber tires and propellant chemicals (~EUR 155 m of EU 2024 exports); (ix) prohibition on supply of AI, HPC, and quantum-computing services to Russian persons (effective 25 November 2025); (x) tourism-services ban (1 January 2026 wind-down); (xi) 117 additional shadow-fleet vessels listed (cumulative 557, exceeding the 18th package's 444); (xii) four Belarus + Kazakhstan banks listed for SPFS use (effective 2 December 2025); (xiii) binding ownership/control definitions added to Reg. 269/2014 (50 % proprietary-rights threshold + eight-criterion control test). Entry into force on 24 October 2025 (day following publication in OJ L_202502033), except for measures with explicit deferred application dates.

On 23 October 2025, the Council of the European Union adopted Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2041 (amending Regulation (EC) No 765/2006) and Council Decision (CFSP) 2025/2040 (amending Decision 2012/642/CFSP), widening the EU's Belarus restrictive-measures regime in lockstep with the 19th Russia sanctions package adopted the same day. The package widens the export ban to industrial goods (salts, ores, rubber articles, tyres, millstones, construction materials, electronic components, rangefinders, propellant chemicals, metals/oxides/alloys), extends the import ban to all acyclic hydrocarbons, introduces a new prior-licensing requirement for services supplied to Belarus, its government, or public bodies, and mirrors the Russia regime's space, AI, and high-performance/ quantum-computing service restrictions. A companion instrument, Council Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/2039, adds 5 new asset-freeze listings (2 individuals + 3 entities, including JSC Holography Industry, Horizont Holding, and ICT Horizont). Entered into force 24 October 2025.

Loi n° 25-12 du 3 août 2025 governing mining activities, promulgated by President Tebboune and published in the Algerian Journal Officiel n° 52 on 7 August 2025, replaces Loi 14-05 of 2014 and is Algeria's first comprehensive mining-code overhaul in eleven years. The reform raises the foreign-ownership ceiling in mining-exploitation companies to 80% of share capital (with a non-dilutable 20% reserved for an Algerian State-owned enterprise), abolishes the prior "strategic substances" category and the statutory monopoly that accompanied it, and allows foreign companies to apply directly for prospection authorisations and exploration permits without first incorporating a local entity. The 51/49 majority-Algerian rule remains in place for quarries and for the hydrocarbons regime — the reform is mining-specific.

On 26 June 2025 President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed four acts constituting Nigeria's most comprehensive fiscal overhaul in decades: the Nigeria Tax Act 2025 (NTA), Nigeria Tax Administration Act 2025 (NTAA), Nigeria Revenue Service (Establishment) Act 2025, and Joint Revenue Board (Establishment) Act 2025. The NTA consolidates and repeals six core statutes — CITA, PITA, PPTA, VAT Act, CGT Act, and Stamp Duties Act — into a single unified code effective 1 January 2026, while the NTAA standardises assessment, filing, and enforcement procedures across all federal taxes. The two establishment acts restructure the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) into the Nigeria Revenue Service (NRS) with a broadened mandate and create an empowered Joint Revenue Board to coordinate federal-state fiscal relations.

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed the Upstream Petroleum Operations (Cost Efficiency Incentives) Order, 2025 on 29 May 2025, introducing a performance-based tax-credit framework for upstream oil and gas operators who beat NUPRC-set Unit Operating Cost benchmarks. Eligible lessees, licensees, and PSC contractors receive tax credits capped at 20% of their annual petroleum tax liability per licence area, applied against Petroleum Profits Tax, Hydrocarbon Tax, or Companies Income Tax. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) conducts annual terrain-specific (onshore, shallow-water, deep-offshore) Unit Operating Cost benchmarking, and the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) co-administers with claw-back provisions for non-compliance; the regime runs through 31 May 2035.

The Iraqi Council of Representatives adopted Law No. 4 of 2025 on 2 February 2025 (176 deputies present, majority vote), amending Article 12 of the Federal General Budget Law for Fiscal Years 2023-2024-2025 (Law No. 13 of 2023). The amendment mandates that the federal government pay international oil companies (IOCs) operating in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) USD 16 per barrel in advance for crude production and transportation costs — more than doubling the USD 6/bbl rate in the original budget law — with all KRI crude to be delivered to and marketed exclusively through the State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO). An international consulting firm, jointly appointed by Baghdad and Erbil within 60 days, is mandated to audit field-level production and transportation costs, with cost-recovery adjustments applied retroactively from the date pipeline flows resume. The law was published in the Iraqi Official Gazette (Al-Waqai al-Iraqiyya) Issue No. 4814 on 17 February 2025.