The Mines Minister has revealed to Reuters that the nation's largest cobalt producer Chambishi Metals Plc has stopped production of the metal because lower prices mean it is not viable. The government is apparently "assessing options to ensure that Chambishi's troubled owner, Luanshya Copper Mine (LCM), does not shut its copper operations as well, and added it was trying to attract fresh investment to rescue the company". These are troubled times indeed.
Interesting article from the Daily Mail - the opposition parties are taking up the government's offer to dialogue on the economic crisis and exchange ideas.
ReplyDeleteOpposition political parties call for platform
By JERRY MUNTHALI
SOME opposition political parties have called on Government to provide a platform on which they can offer solutions to the problems the nation is facing while others have called for a national economic convention to discuss strategies to overcome the global financial crisis.
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Part of me thinks what Zambia probably needs urgently is actually a group of experts at home and abroad to look into the issue as a matter of urgency. Let us get the best and brightest to offer ideas, away from the political posturing.
ReplyDeleteAnother part of me thinks that actually the solutions are obvious and known by everyone. The problem is that the pills may be too hard to swallow. Take for example cutting waste. The Pf proposals discussed on the blog On the need for smaller government...
clearly make sense. But will government really take steps to reduce its size, when it just increased wages? I doubt.
There could be a compromise - shift the emphasis of government employment away from the ministries and toward local government. People now employed in the ministries could be kept on partial pay, until they are retrained for more service oriented jobs - compliance officers, police, healthcare staff, etc. They could do administrative jobs in local government without retraining and improve the quality of service.
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