Message Jeu 11 Avr 2013 11:59

BoZ Act good, says Mopani boss

*petit moment de rigolade*

By NANCY MWAPE
MOPANI Copper Mine has welcomed Government’s decision to closely monitor the flow of exports and imports for Zambia to realise full benefits from its resources.
Company board chairman Emmanuel Mutati, who is also president of the Chamber of Mines of Zambia, however, cautioned Government not to regulate the industry, adding that mining companies have been through regulation before and the experience was not good.
“From past experience, the problem with regulating is that if a company had to import or export anything, it had to apply through the foreign exchange management control,” Mr Mutati said during a meeting with Zambia Daily Mail management in Lusaka yesterday.
“There are emergencies that arise in the mining industry which require quick processing and in the past, the process [regulation] did affect production as it took time to process the applications,” he said.
President Sata recently assented to a BoZ law that seeks to regulate foreign exchange inflows and outflows and monitor international transactions in services and investment in the form of equity and debt securities abroad.
Mr Mutati said it is important for Government to know how the reserves from the sale of metals are accounted for.
“With the word monitoring, one would not have any qualms but we are anxious to see the actual wording in the Act. This is why as an industry, we feel replacing the word ‘regulate’ with ‘monitor’ is much more comforting,” he said.
Mr Mutati said through the central bank, Government has the right to monitor revenue from mineral exploitation because this has a direct impact on the economy and affects the exchange rate.
He said its copper is sold to its parent company, Glencore, and paid in full with reference to the London Metal Exchange prevailing price.
“Ten days after the copper is sold, the money is paid into a Standard Chartered Bank, Kitwe branch in dollars by Glencore… in full. We don’t have a foreign account at all,” he said.
Mr Mutati said if Mopani is to buy goods and services outside Zambia, US dollars are remitted from Standard Charted Bank in Zambia.
“Going forward, people have to understand this because there is a lot of talk that dollars are leaving the country,” Mr Mutati.
He said 30 percent of his company’s total operating costs are in labour, another 30 percent in stores, 23 percent is paid to contractors, 15 percent towards electricity and two percent towards other costs.
Mopani pays an average of US$7.5 million every month for power to the Zambian-owned Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC), Mr. Mutati said.
And an average of KR10,000 is paid to Mulonga Water and Sewerage Company monthly.
The company has pushed its sulphur dioxide emission reduction by almost 90 percent to the end of this year, instead of next year as earlier planned.