On 31 March 2020, the Government of Equatorial Guinea issued the Presidential Decree n° 43/2020 adopting urgent economic measures for strengthening the national social protection system and supporting SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises).
The main measures impacting directly the private sector are indicated below:
• Review all public contracts, including maintenance, technical assistance, advertising and any service in general that is in force until the end of the year 2020, suppressing, in the event that circumstances so advise, those contracts with automatic renewal clauses;
• Inventory the contracts of the Strategic Sectors, such as: Defence, Security, Mines, energy and Telecommunications, among others, in order to know the level of commitments for its rationalization;
• The Ministry of Finance, Economy and Planning must enable a special filing mechanism in order to regularise the tax debt and offer special incentives to taxpayers who avail themselves of it;
• The Ministry of Finance, Economy and Planning and Mines and Mines and Hydrocarbons must negotiate with the companies of the Oil & Gas sector so that they pay the tax debts resulting from the liquidation of the Corporate Tax for the fiscal year 2019 before the end of April of the year 2020;
• For the SMEs of the non-Oil & Gas sector,
o The voluntary payment period of the Minimum Income Tax corresponding to the year 2020 is extended until June;
o The voluntary payment period of the Liquidation resulting from the Corporate Income Tax corresponding to the fiscal year 2019 is extended until July;
o The Minimum Income Tax is also reduced from 3% to 1,5% for the year 2020, until 30 September 2020.
