The Consumer Unit and Trust Society (CUTS) says the Zambian economy has performed well in the last seven years, compared to the period between 1992-2002.
CUTS Board chairperson Love Mutesa disclosed that Zambia’s economy has been growing at an average rate of between 4.5 to 5 per cent, since the year 2003.
Mr Mutesa said the revival of the Zambian economy is also reflected in the increased export earnings from both metal and non traditional exports.
He said this at a press briefing in Lusaka Friday.
[ ZNBC ]
An average growth rate of 5% over 7 years is not enough to get rid of poverty in one of the worlds top 10 poorest countries. 45% of Zambians have stunted growth . We also are in the bottom three of life expectancy in the world. We need annual growth rates of over 7% to be able to make a dent in our poverty levels in which 63% of Zambians live on less than $2 per day. We are are in the doldrums and we need an enlightened leadership to move out of this darkness. Going around the world and far/ting allover in a call for foreign investment is not enough. We can move millions of Zambians out of poverty by giving them tools and means to produce!
#1 neither does insulting others bring development. You are spot on and i believe you can drive your point home without bringing pungent smell into a rather genuine contribution.
In as much as the growth in the economy is good, I believe we could have done better. But 20 years of MMD misrule is holding this country backwards. Lets kick them out come 2011!
LT what has happened to the Mahtani/Sangwa story? You have sucked it off your site. Whatndocument diid they jointly alter?
#4 LT is not a newspaper. They have no journalists. They merely carry feeds from news organisations. That is why LT has become flooded with ZANIS, Times of Zambia and Zambia Daily Mail articles. These newspapers know that people do not go to their websites, so they have hijacked this site to bore us with their tripe. Going back to the topic at hand, it is true that the economy has been doing well. However, corruption is endemic. Therefore the country will continue to lack infracture. This in turn means poverty will continue to haunt the country. MMD have run out of ideas. Unfortunately, the opposition does not fill one with confidence.
Zambia to issue oil licences by November
Zambia will issue oil and gas exploration licences to seven foreign and local companies by November in a bid to become an energy producer, after it passes laws on new licensing fees, Mines Minister Maxwell Mwale said.
Mwale said on Friday the seven companies had already been selected and had even been allowed to visit some of the 23 exploration blocks in six of the southern African country’s nine provinces, where it expects to strike oil despite initial difficulties in attracting investment to the sector.
Mwale said Africa’s largest copper producer also was looking to diversify its economy further by mining uranium for nuclear fuel. He urged the two firms that have been granted licences in the sector to get their act together quickly or risk losing their right to mine.
Britain’s GP Petroleum and Petrodel Resources, Glint Energy of the United States and Exile Resources of Canada were chosen along with Zambian firms Majetu, Barotse Petroleum Company and Chat Milling Company Ltd to explore for oil and gas.
“We have offered a number of blocks to successful bidders, but we have to pass legislation before we grant the licenses,” Mwale told Reuters in Nairobi on the sidelines of a regional meeting on illegal mining.
“We shall grant them licences hopefully well before November,” he said.
Mwale said the new laws would establish the fees for the licences and other regulations governing the sector.
“We are very confident that we will find either both oil and gas or gas. We share the same geological formation with Uganda and parts of Tanzania, so unless we are to be like Israel, where everyone around you has got oil except yourselves, we are hopeful that we shall find oil,” he said.
TRACES OF OIL
Zambia, which relies on copper mining for most of its foreign exchange earnings, has said soil samples sent to European laboratories have shown good traces of oil, particularly in areas bordering oil-producing Angola.
Uganda struck commercial hydrocarbon deposits in 2006, and production is forecast to begin in the last quarter of 2011, while Tanzania produces significant quantities of gas.
Mwale said results of the exploration would take a while to come through because of the depth of the drilling required, work which can only be undertaken in the dry season.
Mwale said junior companies were taking the lead in exploration, but he suspected the bigger players would start preying on them if they struck it rich.
On uranium, Zambia granted mining licences to Toronto-listed Denison Mines Corporation and African Energy Resources of Australia, but Mwale said little had been done so far in getting output off the ground.
“To be fair, the resources found in the southern provinces are not too big, and the two companies are collaborating to set up a joint processing plant because they found it unviable to go it alone. But if they do not do that quickly, we may re-possess their rights to mine,” Mwale said.
“In our country we employ the use-it-or-lose-it principle. If you don’t use it they will lose. They were given the licenses in the latter part of the first quarter this year,” he said.