Minister of Finance Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane has been challenged to come out in the open and give clear details and milestones on how realistic the aspiration or target for Zambia to hit the 3 million tons per annum copper production in the next nine years as he has continued to refer to it even in the 2023 national budget.
Top mining, economists and financial experts have questioned Dr. Musokotwane’s motive behind the continued reference to hitting the 3 million tons per annum copper production without supporting mining or exploration projects which are large enough to support such aspirations.
And the Centre for Trade Policy and Development – CTPD has also weighed in and notes that the budget speech mentions that the country needs to attain the three million metric tonnes annual target for copper production.
CTPD Senior Researcher – Extractives Webby Banda said “We cannot see any exploration and Mine developmental projects that will lead to the attaining of the three million metric tonnes copper production target.”
Banda said this is against the backdrop that we cannot attain the three million metric tonnes with the current producing projects only. He echoed other stakeholders that have admitted that the target is unattainable – stating that growing the mining sector to the level of producing three million metric tonnes from the current level means that we must grow the sector by almost three-fold.
“In other words, we must have additional three identical mining operations for every current project. Additionally, mining takes a long time to reach the exploitation phase (i.e., in the best-case scenario, it takes about 5 – 10 years).” he maintained.
“The other question that needs deep interrogation is that even with the current 800,000 tonnes of annual copper production, the country continues to face problems with illicit financial flows, transfer mispricing, lack of value addition, lack of backward linkages (local content), problems in major mines such as KCM and Mopani, so how will 3 million annual copper production be attained?”
Banda further told ZBT that even if Zambia increase Copper production to 3 million tons per annum, what is the guarantee that these problems above will be resolved to induce a surge in the local benefits take?
Finance Minister Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane announced that government is targeting to increased copper production from the current 800,000 tons per annum to 3 million tons per annum in 10 years when justifying his decision to awarding tax incentives to the mining industry, a number that continues to be questioned by more and more experts.
