MINISTER of Mines and Minerals Development Richard Musukwa has reiterated that there was no duty on processing minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

H explained that what government introduced was a five per cent import duty on copper concentrates and ores coming from the DRC.

“Zambia has a total holding capacity of 1.1 million tonnes and the Zambian government is aware of the under-utilisation of the smelters in 2019,” Musukwa said during questions for oral answer in Parliament on Tuesday.

He said the utilisation of smelters at the mines in 2019 could not solemnly be attributed to the imposition of duty on the copper concentrates and ores.

“The smelters at Mopani and Konkola Copper Mines has a holding capacity of 527,000 tonnes per annum and were not fully operational in 2019. Smelters at Mopani Copper Mine was shut down due to a technical restructuring due failure. The smelter at KCM was also not operational in 2019 due to faults and logical maintenance which was long overdue causing the company to shut down its operations,” said Musukwa.

Source: The Mast