The Zambia Chamber of Mines has called on government to institute a national indaba in the mining sector to find a ways of enhancing its performance.
Speaking in an interview in Kitwe yesterday, Chamber of Mines Chief Executive Director Sokoni Chilembo said the Chamber expects government to give a signal of how the economic performance of the mining sector will look like in the few coming years.
He said this could be done through interventions such as institution of a national indaba in order to revamp its performance.
“Government has to work out modalities that will ensure that the mining sector is boosted amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, I believe we are not the only country that is doing it, South Africa, Namibia, is doing it as something key to structure our way out of this covid-19,” Mr Chilembo said.
And Mr Chilembo said the chamber of mines expects the Minister of Finance to give various tax relief to the mining sectors as he presents the budget today.
He cited tax relieves such as withdraw of mineral royalty to lower the cost of production and also a reduction of duty on capital equipment coming into the country to enable the sector to grow.
He further explained that the chamber also expects removal of duties on export of ores and concentrates leaving the country.
The Mining sector has this year recorded a significant reduction in production and the reduction has been attributed mainly to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country has seen the general drop in the economic performance coupled with falling copper prices on the international market.
Finance Minister Bwalya Ng’andu is tomorrow expected to present to parliament the proposed National Budget for 2021 amid various expectation from different stakeholders.
LT please get the names correct. Its Mr. Sokwani Chilembo not Sokoni..
That’s a great call to give relief to taxation on capital equipment. We can’t have it both ways in this covid difficult time. Stimulate CAPEX inputs so we increase output capacity. Increased taxation revenues will then be consequential.
Can this be organized online to encourage attendance from people in distant places?
Nigeria figures out best how to deal with the thieving practice of transfer pricing by the mines and unauthorized remittances of money from the country. The simple arrangement is 50% of what is mined is ours to sell or keep. No tax or anything, tax is paid on profits and these mines have not declared a profit in 21 years. So instead it’s the country’s robbed double by meting made to pay them back VAT. These are simple lessons that can be learned in International Business law, surely all these years after independence there’s no one back home savvy enough to tackle global corporate exploitation? We should just seek Nigeria’s help on how they resolved theft of their oil overnight to our situation.