Zambia, Norway seal deal to improve tax collection from mining industry

Zambia and Norway have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at enhancing transparency and equitable collection of revenues from the southern African nation' s mining industry, the Zambia Daily Mail reported on Friday. The memorandum of understanding on mineral value chain monitoring project will see the designing of a multi-purpose and multi-stakeholder scheme for monitoring the country's mineral value chain from exploration to export. Fredson Yamba, the Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance, said during a signing ceremony that the inability by government institutions to effectively monitor mining operations has proved to be a source of concern to the government and other stakeholders. "The system is expected to provide government with an informed, transparent and non-discriminatory platform for the monitoring of the industry, contribute to the equitable collection of taxes and other fiscal revenues from the sector," he was quoted as saying by the paper.

The system will ensure that the government and the mines interact as a single regulatory entity with one reporting framework that feeds into all mandated administration agencies, he added. There have been increased reports that Zambia's tax collection agency lacks capacity to monitor the outflow of revenue from the mining industry, resulting in the country losing millions of funds in tax evasion. Endi