[{"bbox": [86, 154, 340, 184], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## 2.2 Problem Analysis"}, {"bbox": [97, 210, 1134, 412], "category": "Text", "text": "If the mining sector in Zambia is one of the main contributors to the country's economy and income, the sector remains underperformant, with weak downstream value chains and heavily reliant on raw copper production - which makes the economy vulnerable to production constraints as well as fluctuations of global commodity prices. The sector is not even close in reaching its economic potential - due to incomplete exploration and geological mapping, transparency and governance issues, the weight of the informal sector in local economic systems, lack of skills, infrastructure deficiencies and low mitigation level to environmental and social impacts."}, {"bbox": [97, 425, 556, 453], "category": "Section-header", "text": "### Incomplete and obsolete geological mapping"}, {"bbox": [97, 455, 1134, 713], "category": "Text", "text": "Currently the country's geological mapping stands at 55% of the total country surface and it was done before 1998. Moreover, not all map sheets and accompanying reports are digitized, no mineral occurrence maps have been produced and in general geodata are either not available or not of the adequate quality. The production of detailed and reliable geological information is a *a sine qua non* condition for attracting investments and diversifying the geographical scope of exploration and mineral production. Aiming to revitalise and to increase the potential of the sector, the government announced ZMW 160 million in its 2024 budget for airborne geological surveys, which has been welcomed as an important milestone for new exploration and eventually contribute to achieving Zambia's ambitious target of 3 million tonnes annual copper production by 2031."}, {"bbox": [97, 716, 1134, 801], "category": "Text", "text": "Despite the commendable effort to produce new geodata, the investment is far from enough and strengthening the Public Private Partnerships would also be a solution for attracting funds for geological exploration."}, {"bbox": [97, 814, 476, 842], "category": "Section-header", "text": "### Weak Transparency and governance"}, {"bbox": [97, 843, 1134, 1276], "category": "Text", "text": "The mining sector-related regulatory framework is weak, uncertain and not adapted to sector needs for inclusive growth and development. The Mines and Minerals Development Act of 2015 does not adequately provide for, among others, the effective and efficient regulation, monitoring of compliance and carrying out of enforcement activities in the mining sector, resulting in challenges such as increase in illegal mining activities, environmental degradation, poor occupational health and safety standards, discrimination against women in all their diversity, unsustainable exploration and mining methods, as well as loss of Government revenues. This situation is expected to improve through the enactment of the Minerals Regulation Commission Bill, presently still in discussions at the National Assembly. In addition, initiatives such as the Zambia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (ZEITI), able to provide third party oversight of the mining sector in Zambia, are key to the sector's improvement. This signals to investors that the government is committed towards upholding the sector's transparency and accountability. An obsolete and incomplete regulatory system, both in terms of legislation and institutional capacity are the main reason for unsustainable mining practices both in the formal and informal sectors, with heavy repercussions on environment, communities, human health, safety and crossborder criminality."}, {"bbox": [97, 1277, 1134, 1623], "category": "Text", "text": "A major hindrance to business development in the mining sector (including the formalisation of the small-scale and artisanal mining operations) remains the broader issue of the uncertainty in the regulatory environment, when it comes to the possibility for the Government to change the terms of a contract, and to the highly instable tax regime, modified many times during the last decade. This does also affect the mining-related downstream value chains. The weak manufacturing base in the mineral sector has been contributing to the very low level processing of mineral products within the country and, subsequently, to the generalization of export of low value raw materials. This can mainly be attributed to the lack of investment capacity at national level and to a weak enabling environment for foreign investments in the country. The prospects of processing minerals for value addition within the country comes with enormous benefits such as job creation as well as increased revenues to government. The need to create an enabling environment to support downstream value chains of mineral resources is critical for the socioeconomic development of the country. This should include also the support to circular economy opportunities"}, {"bbox": [604, 1654, 627, 1676], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "11"}]