GOVERNMENT has approved the sale of 49 per cent shares in Indeni Oil Refinery in Ndola, Mines, Energy and Water Development Minister, Christopher Yaluma has told Parliament.
The Government is in the same vein, looking for US$410 million for putting up a new refinery.
Mr Yaluma said this in Parliament in Lusaka yesterday when he issued a ministerial statement on the removal of subsidies on fuel.
“Cabinet approved the letting go of 49 per cent shares in Indeni to a private investor. The reason being to boost funding and find means of building a new refinery urgently,” he said.
He said the Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) was already interacting with possible partners and that while this process was going-on Government was equally looking for the $410 million for the new plant.
On the removal of subsidies on fuel, the Minister said as a result of maintaining subsidies, Government’s capacity to collect the Strategic Reserve Fund was being compromised and resulted in the lack of progress in the construction of petroleum infrastructure around the country.
Mr Yaluma said a total of K2.4 billion was used to sustain the fuel subsidy from 2009 to 2013.
He said Government had a programme to construct provincial fuel storage depots as well as rehabilitation of the national storage facilities in Ndola and the Bitumen unit at the Indeni plant.
He said under the first phase of the programme, the Lusaka and Mpika storage depots as well as the rehabilitation of the Ndola fuel terminal were close to completion, while for the Solwezi project, the contractor would soon mobilise to the site.
The contractor would also mobilise to the Mongu site, in the course of this year, but this would be once the three-kilometer access road had been worked on to allow heavy duty vehicles carrying materials to reach the site.
Under the second phase of the programme, fuel depots would be constructed in the remaining provinces, namely Central, Eastern, Luapula, Northern and Southern Provinces.
Mr Yaluma said construction of fuel depots would reduce reliance on the Ndola fuel terminal, as well as improve efficiency in the distribution of fuel and that in the long run, the programme was expected to reduce logistical costs in the distribution of fuel and hence lead to lower fuel prices.
“Therefore, the removal of subsidies on fuel will ensure that the Strategic Reserves Fund has adequate resources to accelerate the completion of petroleum infrastructure development programme,” he said.
In addition to the removal of the five per cent import duty, Government had commenced the process of reflecting taxes on fuel in absolute values as opposed to the current system where taxes were reflected in percentage terms.
“This is also a way of mitigating the compounding effects of the increase in the price of fuel. This measure, however, requires an amendment to the law and will therefore be presented to this August House for consideration,” he said.
Additionally Cabinet had decided that there would be periodic fuel price reviews in line with economic fundamentals and reiterated that the removal of subsidies would in the long run be beneficial to all Zambians.
every move u re making.Strategy implementation with envisioned focus is key to political sucess.Go on so tht 2016 u ve physical structures to point at as sucess not political yurping without vision.
Silence please!
Is their a retirement age in your country?
I happen to see much older people in government positions.
Why don’t you have a retirement age of 60 like here in Scotland and leave your jobs for hungrier young lioness to take over.
I am sick and tired to see people with grey hair in government , for one to have grey hair by African standards it is a sign of someone being at-least 50 years plus.
On behalf of all the diaspora people in the UK, ‘we’ demand answers.
Thanks
Mushota pse keep quiet.
mushota,you are not in scotland!! please stop embarrasing us here in scotland.Thank you.
Boza
irrele
Why do we religiously follow prescriptions from the west. Privatising already existing enterprises has not worked in Zambia. Why cant the private sector build the new refinery instead.
It is you sir that needs a mental prescription because you talking a load of nonsense. Religious? prescription ? Amazon have good books which I could recommend, but will not ‘prescribe’ as you put it to you. 🙂
Thanks
This is really poor planing bwana minister and you are even proud to announce that in Parliament, shame, no wonder this continent always lags behind in everything I mean everything
Sense? Repossess Zamtel and ZR, then sell lndeni! Chimbwi no plan indeed!
Imagine that…
A new Refinery for $410m? This must be a vegetable oil refinery and not a crude oil refinery.
Some swine must be trolling me, honestly how do you tick someone down without saying anything! Dear troll be assured that I wont stop been the voice of reason, logic and rationality! Goncalves is not going anywhere! Long live Goncalves! Long live logic! Long live sanity! Abash PF irrationality! Abash kaponyarism and it’s off shoots of Sata….nism, irrationality, criminality, thuggery etc etc etc!
Goncalves, just shut up iwe Namazai
Lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Those shares are hot ask total and that other french company.
why not do the same for Zamtel..its useless…
Relinquishing control of a strategic industry is not a good idea. Build the new refinery before you sell off the shares in Indeni. Otherwise the private companies will hold everyone at ransom!
It will be interesting to know the identity of the Investors (or infesters as I would prefer to call them). I hope it is not a coalition of ministers. This is a business where you can NEVER make a loss unless you are really foolish.
Which investor is gonna buy old,badly neglected and uneconomic Indeni if some new competing refinery is to be built that’ll make Indeni a really negative investment?
Shinga?
@Mushota, ulishilu iwe……………. Phew!
Next government will re-nationalise just like PF did to Zambia railways and Zamtel. Investors are hope you can see the risk here!
cr*p investment to be lost by 2016. only those with stolen money can waste it by investing at INDENI.
In scotland for sex ,Mushota
Government is broke for real. Whatever happened to the surplus RB left? Don’t believe PF lies of trying to source funds for a new refinery, that facility will never be built! They are trying to butter you up on the sale of Indeni shares by concoting the new refinery story. Money is needed to fund by-elections and push the one party agenda. Come 2016 no ground will have been broken for a new refinery, but Indeni will be long gone to so called investors.
History repeats itself.The excitment of privatisation and the losses that go with it.An African problem with a Zambian diagnosis.This is the way Zamtroop accounts came about in Chiluba and Sata’s days early MMD days.Zambia airways, ZCCM assets in London wiped out and no one was able to account for them.Shasonga still on the run because of ‘Faka Speed Mufana Kaunda’.
History repeats itself.The excitment of privatisation and the losses that go with it.An African problem with a Zambian diagnosis.This is the way Zamtroop accounts came about in Chiluba and Sata’s early MMD days.Zambia airways, ZCCM assets in London wiped out and no one was able to account for them.Shasonga still on the run because of ‘Faka Speed Mufana Kaunda’.The kamimbya trafigula and midlands deals still bagging millions of tax payers cash while the compromised ACC is bullied to drop the investigations by Kamimya and UKWA.
I am a Chinese?I want to make some friends Kitwe friends.Interested friends can contact me. e-mail:[email protected]
Can anyone make any sense from this extract writtten by a PHD student who has been pregnant for over a year.I’m struggling to understand it.
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It is you sir that needs a mental prescription because you talking a load of nonsense. Religious? prescription ? Amazon have good books which I could recommend, but will not ‘prescribe’ as you put it to you
Thanx! I also did not understand. But I thought it was someone impersonating the fake Mushota ( pretending to be someone who is also pretending to be someone)
Mushota is just a whore,i wonder why pipo bother responding to her crap,i bet she lacks a real man who can plug her mouth with it.We got loads in Zambia,shes in a wrong place.
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