UPDATE 1-China's Sinopec gets $1 bln subsidy in April
(adds industry comment, details)
BEIJING, May 27 (Reuters) - Asia's top refiner Sinopec Corp. (SNP.N) (0386.HK) received a 7.1 billion yuan ($1.02 billion) government subsidy in April to offset its processing losses, Xinhua said on Tuesday.
Beijing has in the past two years offered a string of tax incentives to help stem widening refining losses as crude surged to peaks above $135 a barrel, to avoid more politically tricky hikes in domestic fuel prices in the face of high inflation.
Xinhua said company chairman Su Shilin released the information at a board meeting.
Senior company officials reached by Reuters declined to confirm the figure, but said Beijing started to rebate 75 percent of the 17 percent value-added tax for crude imports from April.
"It's an estimated figure. We need the final calculations by the Ministry of Finance to announce a definite figure," said one official.
Officials made it clear that the crude tax rebate is the same policy the Ministry of Finance announced last month to compensate for refining losses.
The government has already granted Sinopec one-off subsidies for 2006, 2007 and also the first quarter of this year. It handed over 4.9 billion yuan for 2007 and 7.4 billion yuan for the first quarter.
Sinopec imports roughly an average of 11 million tonnes of crude each month (2.7 million barrels per day), accounting for some 80 percent of crude oil imports into the world's second-largest oil user.
($1=6.936 Yuan)
(reporting by Jim Bai and Chen Aizhu)
