Zambia cuts economic growth target for 2015

The Zambian government has revised its economic growth for 2015 due to both internal and external pressures, Minister of Finance Alexander Chikwanda said on Tuesday.

Chikwanda said the country's economy will now grow by 5.8 percent instead of the seven percent projected in the 2015 budget.

In remarks delivered in the Zambian parliament, the finance minister said the growth of the economy has negatively been affected by slow growth in the mining and agriculture sectors due to unforeseen circumstances.

He said the slowdown in the global economy has had a negative effect on the economic growth of Zambia as well.

The agriculture sector, he said, has suffered negatively following the poor rains experienced in the season which has resulted in output of maize, the country's staple crop, to reduce by 21.9 percent from 3.5 million tons in the 2013/2014 agriculture season to 2.6 million tons in the 2014/2015 season.

The Zambian minister, in his ministerial statement reviewing the performance of the 2015 budget in the first five months of 2015, said the growth in the mining was expected to slow down and that the government will not achieve the targeted production in the sector going by figures obtained in the first quarter of the year.

According to him, copper production in the first quarter of the year was 164,386 tons compared to 179,584 tons during the same period in 2014.

He attributed the slowdown in the mining sector to a slump in global copper prices due to reduced demand.

The Zambian minister said the slowdown in the growth of the agriculture and mining sectors will have a negative bearing on other sectors of the economy such as foreign exchange market in which copper accounts for over 70 percent in foreign exchange earnings. Endi