Zambian Mining News The Premium Source of Information on The Zambian Mining Industry
Related Articles
Zambia has unveiled the budget in the legislative house for next year’s expenditure with the country expected to utilise an estimated K47 billion in various sectors and programmes during the fiscal year.
Addressing lawmakers, finance minister Alexander Chikwanda stated that the Government envisages to spend 25 percent of the total budget or gross domestic product, which will be financed from domestic revenue of K35.1 billion, representing 75.2 percent of the GDP.
He added that grants from cooperating partners of K1.2 billion, representing 3 percent of the total budget will be complemented by domestic revenues. It envisages borrowing at 2 percent of GDP translating to K4 billion while K4.2 billion will be a combination of foreign programme and project financing.
The balance of K2.4 billion, according to Chikwanda is earmarked proceeds from the 2014 euro bonds, which in total covers US$750 million borrowed last year and a further US$1 billion secured this year, he added.
On Mining, Chikwanda revealed an increased eight percent in mineral royalties for underground mining operations as final tax; 20 percent mineral royalty for open cast mining operations.
The Government seeks to realize 30 percent corporate income tax rate on income earned from tolling and 30 percent corporate income tax rate on income to be earned from processing of purchased mineral ores, concentrates and any other semi-processed minerals, currently taxed as income from mining operations, Chikwanda added.
“Mr. Speaker, last year I informed this house that we needed to increase our income from the mining sector. Since then, significant progress has been made towards the implementation of a multi-purpose and multi stakeholder framework for monitoring the country’s mineral value chain aimed at increasing transparency in the sector.” He added.
