LUSAKA (Reuters) – Zambia’s 2017 copper output is expected to increase to between 800,000 and 850,000 tonnes due to stable power supply and higher copper prices from 774,290 tonnes in last year, mines minister Christopher Yaluma said on Thursday.
Zambia’s copper production is next year likely to increase further to reach 1 million tonnes, Yaluma said, citing improved power generation and higher prices.
“As we see it right now there is a good picture. We have sufficient power and the price has gone up. With the new trends, we have projected at least 800-850,000 tonne this year and next year will manage to hit a million,” Yaluma said.
Zambia in September estimated copper production to inch lower to 753,992 tonnes this year mainly due to lower output from Konkola Copper Mines, a subsidiary of London-listed Vedanta Resource.
Production of copper and how the product benefits the common zambian are two things at the table , just increasing copper mining doesnt mean much if zambians still remain poverty stricken and under fed .
Our politicians must start thinking much deeper than they do , going in circles doesnt mean anything we must sit down and think why we are not making headway, is there anything we can do to grow our economy from our metal.
Value addition can be one of them if implemented will create more jobs for our youths zambia loses alot by exporting copper in raw form we know there are alot more products in copper if smelted this is .
With value addition to our comodity will add more to the industry in zambia and add more exports to other countries more jobs added .
Really just going…
1 Million tonnes of copper to be STOLEN from Zambia. If I was a Minister of Mines, I’d be ashamed to even say such a thing. Some people have no conscious. How can you even say such a thing when you are branded as one of the hungriest countries. People have no shame!
When people hear these figures they think it is a lot of money. Let’s assume the price of copper is $5000/ton. These figures translate into about $4 billion. Again assume profitability is at 25% – that is equal to about $1 billion; and this is the taxable amount – assume at 30%, it translates to about $300 million. Even if we assumed that hypothetically that the govt were to collect all the sales value (~$4 billion) it is still too little for our economy. Therefore, as nshilimubemba has pointed out, unless we implement value addition programs, there is nothing much from this resource.
Lets look at the numbers other than yapping all the time.
At 800,000 tons @ $6000 ?
At 850,000 tons @$6000 ?
What the % contribution of copper to GDP?
Should we still be talking about copper and not our progress towards diversification of the economy?