Fights against mineral royalty non-deductibility removal baseless-ZCM

Fights against mineral royalty non-deductibility removal baseless-ZCM
By BUUMBA CHIMBULU
RECENT arguments against the removal of mineral royalty non-deductibility announced in the 2022 national budget have been lacking in evidence, depth of understanding, and foresight.
This is according to the Zambia Chamber of Mines (ZCM) who have stated that this sort of retrograde discourse had for too long crowded out common sense and professional opinion ZCM in its editorial comment for the December 2021 newsletter stated that criticisms of this provision’s removal demonstrated neither a grasp of the reality faced by stakeholders in the mining sector, nor an eye on what tomorrow would hold for the country if the status quo were to continue.
“It is thus no wonder that, while the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) convenes conferences on battery manufacturing and forges ahead to reach two million tonnes of copper per annum, Zambia is still struggling with basics, including edging towards the one million tonne per annum milestone,” ZCM stated.

It stated that two well-worn lines of argument were that mining profits were shifted and mining exports underreported.

According to ZCM, both had informed Zambia’s non-stop tampering with fiscal policy stating that these had also been the basis of arguments against royalty deductibility.

“The time has come to raise the level of this discourse. The uninitiated have tried to discredit the first of the necessary life-saving steps for mining that were agreed at this year’s Mining
“Such naysaying without alternative solutions reveals a terrifying readiness to risk more mining industry job losses and industry decline for net negative returns.

The aim of this editorial is to afford the uninitiated a full view of the fundamentals to which they are lending credibility,” it stated.