Africa-Press – Zambia. Social Anthropologist James Musonda says the sustained stagnation of Mopani Copper Mines and Konkola Copper Mines(KCM) will see the country’s aspirations to grow annual copper production figures thwarted starting with this year where he has predicted that Zambia may not improve its figures.
The country produced just over 850,000 tons last year, but Mines Minister Paul Kabuswe envisages an output of 1.3 million this year with first quarter figures set to be released in the coming week.
Dr. Musonda says with Mopani tied to the alleged bad Glencore deal that the multinational company will continue to make profit while Zambia does all the work and KCM is still engulfed in court cases leaving both needing excessive capital to become profitable.
He argues that the government has not done anything within the last 8 months to create a foundation to begin growing these figures and remains pessimistic that even this year’s copper production will show no significant progress and cast a hopeless future on the aspirations to grow production to 3 million tons annually.
He says it remains worrying that Zambia’s third and fourth largest producers of copper remain stagnant and without direction from government in terms of the in excess of $300 million needed to make both mines profitable respectively, leaving the country’s production mass to the mines in north western province.
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