The Productivity Commission's Trade and Assistance Review 2013-14 was released this week, and found the levels of financial assistance provided to the mining industry were far lower compared with those given to manufacturing and primary production.
The latest in an annual series of reports, the review revealed the mining industry received a negative $234.9 million in net tariff assistance last financial year, second only to the services sector, which received negative $4.9 billion of tariff assistance.
By comparison, the manufacturing sector received $5.5 billion worth of net tariff assistance, largely due to assistance provided on its outputs, while the primary production sector received net tariff assistance to the tune of $228.1 million.
In terms of budgetary assistance, the mining sector received $520.7 million last financial year, though this represents an effective rate of assistance of less than 1% when value added by the sector is taken into account.
The comparative rate of assistance was about 4% for manufacturing and close to 3% for primary production.
The CME said the figures proved the government's contributions to the sector were negligible, and set straight misinformation spread by groups within the community.
"Not content with dismissing the valuable economic contribution made by industry, anti-resources activists routinely mislead the community on the level of government assistance and subsidies available to the resources sector," CME chief executive Reg Howard-Smith said.
"[This] report should end the debate on this issue, but these activists have never let facts or evidence interfere with their campaign rhetoric."
The chamber said the sector continued to be a significant contributor to state and federal economies and pointed to WA's state budget, where more than 14% of revenue was generated by mining royalties, as the prime example.
"A strong and prosperous resources sector delivers enormous benefits to the community," Howard-Smith said.
"It's an industry all Western Australians should be proud of."
The Australian government's tariff and budgetary assistance to industry as a whole was more than $17 billion in gross terms last financial year, comprising $7.9 billion in tariff assistance, $4.1 billion of budgetary outlays and $5 billion in tax concessions.
