Friday, March 29, 2024

Zambia Chamber of Mines Urges Government to take Advantage of the Positive Rating by Fitch Ratings Agency

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The Zambia Chamber of Mines has urged the government to take advantage of the positive rating of the country by Fitch ratings and put the mining industry back on the growth path.

Zambia Chamber of Mines President Godwin Beene said the upgrade is an opportunity for the country to seize control of the market narrative.

Dr. Beene explains that the upgrade is an opportunity to leverage the record bullish copper demand outlook to build more momentum and seize control of the market narrative.

He noted that Zambia has always had an opportunity to attract world-class mining investment into its internationally renowned mineral exploration and production potential which the world mining investment community views with continuing interest.

He explained that it is also a good opportunity for local potential mining investors to showcase their projects on the world mining stage on the back of the favourable rating.

“The upgrade by Fitch is a great opportunity for Zambia to latch onto this positive assessment by a major international investment house, which will be a boon for both local and international investors,” he said.

Dr. Beene emphasized that there has never been a better moment for the government to reset the narrative than now.

He added that by removing the impediments to investment in the mining sector, the government can lock in a solid production increase outlook upon which to base the restoration of broad-based economic growth.

This is according to a press statement issued to the media by the Zambia Chamber of Mines Communications Manager Talent Ngandwe in Lusaka today.

Recently, the Fitch Ratings upgraded Zambia’s Long-Term Local-Currency (LTLC) Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to ‘CCC’ from ‘CC’ and has affirmed Zambia’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency (LTFC) IDR at ‘RD’.

8 COMMENTS

  1. It’s very unfortunate that after about a 100 years of mining Zambia still doesn’t have a cadre of mining experts that can profile a mining venture that can attract capital from international financial markets such as the London Stock Exchange. For as long as we’re unable to do that these ratings won’t be of much benefit to the business sector and the economy. It’ll be just the usual politics of ” we can do it without Hichilema and Magande”. Even Hichilema is just busy with shoddy deals. It’ll just open a window for further government borrowing. UNIP educated so many Zambians but all they can are just shoddy deals. Isn’t it a shame that we even want to bring Brazilians and Peruvians to come and do what we’ve been doing for a century?

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  2. Take advantage of the “positive” Fitch rating? Going up from CC to CCC? They are fooling themselves. A Fitch rating of CCC is called JUNK status, and NO serious investor from whatever country will touch Zambia with a bargepole – unless interest rates are massively increased.
    Ayatollah, in principle I agree with you, but mines are quite capital intensive, especially if you want to sell more finished products than just copper ingots. Producing copper piping, copper cable, copper anodes etc. is much more valuable then just ingots – to set factories up for these requires funding – and there is no funding available in Zambia, especially with this horrible PF government. So, we’re dependent on foreign sources.

  3. Take advantage of the “positive” Fitch rating? Going up from CC to CCC? They are fooling themselves. A Fitch rating of CCC is called JUNK status, and NO serious investor from whatever country will touch Zambia with a bargepole – unless interest rates are massively increased.
    Ayatollah, in principle I agree with you, but mines are quite capital intensive, especially if you want to sell more finished products than just copper ingots. Producing copper piping, copper cable, copper anodes etc. is much more valuable then just ingots – to set factories up for these requires funding – and there is no funding available in Zambia, especially with this fantastic PF government. So, we’re dependent on foreign resources.

  4. Does this man understand what rating is required to fund mining projects or he his just saying something for the sake of it?

  5. @No Corruption, the fact that mining is a capital calls for serious minded persons, focused on long term returns. We seem to have mining engineers and metallurgists that don’t know the value of minerals. If they did they would understand which products can be made out of the raw material and the value. We have engineers who feel proud that they repaired an machine and completely get stuck when there are no spare parts. They’re just fitters with fat salaries. At the moment we shouldn’t be yearning for foreigners to come and help us exploit our mineral resources. So the problem isn’t politics alone

  6. These rating clearly indicate whether you will possibly default on your credit or not as one of the parameters to use. Reinvestment is actually an indicator that FDI is in the offing and may possibly be injected

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