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Leader of the opposition in Parliament, Brian Mundubile, has appealed to Minister of Finance and National Planning, Situmbeko Musokotwane, to give a Progress Report on how far the mining sector has gone in ramping up production in exchange for the concessions Zambia gave to investors.
Mundubile said, in the 2022 National Budget, Dr. Musokotwane gave out about K3 billion in mining concessions to the mining sector with a view to ramp up production to three million tonnes in the next 10 years.
According to a statement issued on Sunday in Lusaka, Mundubile said this meant that year by year, there will be an increase in the production of copper.
Mundubile said the increase in the mining of copper was going to result in an increase in the supply of Foreign Exchange (FOREX) on the market.
He is surprised that there seems to be no change in copper production figures in the second year of the UPND Administration in office, which caused serious stress on the FOREX market.
“These are the policy inconsistencies we are talking about of having acted to our detriment by giving away concessions up to three billion Kwacha per year and yet there seems to be no movement absolutely from the mining sector,” he said.
Mundubile said in the recent past, stakeholders were told that the Bank of Zambia offloaded up to US$ 400 million on the market in a bid to arrest the increasing exchange rate.
He said the net effect is that an average borrower who is a Zambian is the one that will take up the burden of paying for their loans by an extended period.
“The target were actually the mines giving them concessions and incentives so that they can improve the supply of FOREX on the market. This would have helped to increase on Zambia’s Foreign Reserves. The liquidity on the market was going to improve and yet the exact opposite has happened,” he said.
Mundubile said what the country is witnessing is the Bank of Zambia trying to reduce the liquidity on the market and at the same time depleting the Foreign Reserves to stabilize the exchange rate.
“I feel for the Zambian people that are now taking the burden of having to pay for their loans for a much longer period,” he said.
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