Nigeria Content Online

The
high copper price will bring further hefty investment into the sector
in Zambia next year, keeping it on track to produce an annual 1 million
tonnes by 2012, the head of the body representing foreign miners said.

Chamber of Mines of
Zambia president, Nathan Chishimba, said the trend seen in 2010, when
Zambia attracted $2 billion in new mining investments, would continue
and would further benefit from stable tax policies in the southern
African country.

“I think the prospects for mining in Zambia… are very, very bright,” Chishimba told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

“A high copper
price … permits flexibility by investors to plough back into
improvements in production, improvements in efficiency, and overall
improvement in output.

“We believe these
new projects, once they stabilise, will go a very long way towards
achieving the 1 million tonne mark which we have set for ourselves in
the next two years or so,” he said.

London Metal
Exchange copper rose to a record high of $9,447 a tonne on Wednesday
when trade resumed after the Christmas break, during which U.S. futures
rallied to a top fuelled by a weaker dollar and worries about supply
from Chile.

Metals prices are
expected to follow their own fundamentals during 2011, as emerging
market economies drive ahead and demand recovers in developed nations,
pushing copper above $11,000 a tonne, Goldman Sachs forecast this month.

Chishimba said the
investment of $400 million into a Zambian copper project by Brazil’s
Vale, the world’s top iron ore miner, was a vote of confidence in
Zambia’s mining sector, which is the largest copper producer in Africa.

Finance minister,
Situmbeko Musokotwane, said in November the government had agreed to
maintain the existing mining taxes for 10 years to provide stability to
mining investors.

Chishimba said
“shifting of goal posts and knee-jerk reactions” via policy changes
without exhaustive consultation of industry players could pose a risk
to the sector and he welcomed the stability in policies, which he said
reassured investors.

Chishimba said it
had taken $5 billion in investment over the last decade for Zambia to
get back to annual copper output of more than 720,000 tonnes, and the
country should strive to exceed that by attracting further investment.

Zambia should also
bring down the cost of doing business and invest in energy and
infrastructure projects to support the growing mining industry, he said.

Other mining
companies operating in Zambia include Vedanta Resources Plc, Equinox
Minerals, Glencore International AG, and Metorex.