TRANSPARENCY International Zambia says the false reporting of copper exports by the Central Statistical Office is an indictment on the competence and capacity of the institution. Last week during the signing of an MoU on a new Mineral Value Chain Monitoring Framework with six government ministries, Norwegian Ambassador to Zambia Arve Ofstad cited erroneous reporting of copper exports to Switzerland when more than half of the commodity actually ends up in China.
Ambassador Ofstad expressed shock that state agencies such as the Central Statistics Office have been misleading Zambians for a while about the country’s copper export destination, and called for more transparency and accountability to enrich public debate. TIZ president Lee Habasonda said the revelation was an indictment on the competence and capacity of the institution, and called on the newly-elected government to consider overhauling all monitoring and evaluation systems.
“Clearly, if false information is going to be spread around when we have institutions to tackle such issues, it is an indictment on the competence and the capacity of our own institutions, so the new President must quickly move in and ensure this is redressed with the urgency that it deserves. We cannot continue on a business as usual in dealing with the country’s resources,”
said Habasonda in an interview