30 September 2005
THE Copperbelt Forestry Company (CFC) Limited in Kitwe is owed K1.2 billion in delayed payments by Zesco, which is its major buyer of poles for electricity lines.
Company managing director John Sichinga disclosed this when a Parliamentary committee for economic affairs visited the company on Wednesday.
"This is making it difficult for the company to operate effectively as most companies have huge debts arising from delayed payments," Mr Sichinga said.
He said the company, which was born out of privatisation was economically viable and could do better in business if only it received support from government.
Mr Sichinga said Zambians had a terrible culture of doing business as evident in the way his company was having problems recovering debt.
It sometimes took the company two years to receive payments, which were supposed to be paid in 30 days time.
The forest sector was also faced with a lot of problems due to policy changes.
There was no stable policy in terms of export and processing of timber. There was need for a stable policy because people in export were not getting the value of their products, he said.
Mr Sichinga disclosed that CFC earned K1.2 billion per month but with the new investment, it would be earning K2 billion.
Speaking after touring the company, chairperson of the committee, Edith Nawakwi said the investment the company was undertaking to add value to its products was the way forward for Zambia.
She said the country could only develop through the local people themselves.
Local businesses could only develop and contribute effectively to Zambia's economy with support from the Government.
This could only be achieved by protecting small emerging business enterprises.
Meanwhile, Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) has assured Government of continuous power supply to the mining industry despite the massive load-shedding the country is experiencing.
CEC Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Neil Croucher said CEC, despite being a distributor of power from Zesco which was carrying out load-shedding, would ensure that production in the mines was not affected as a result of the load shedding.
Mr Croucher was speaking yesterday at the company's boardroom when the parliamentary committee on Economics and Labour, which toured his company, wanted to know if the massive load shedding the country was experiencing would not affect the mining industry.
The committee which toured CEC comprised Ms Nawakwi, Kafue MP Robert Sichinga, Kabwe Central MP Patrick Musonda and John Chibanga of Chama North.
Mr Croucher said CEC would not compromise its power supply to the mines because it was aware that the mining industry played a vital role in economic development.
He, however said in case of anything, the company would use the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) inter-connector to supply power to the mines.
Committee chairperson Ms Nawakwi said the massive load-shedding was adversely affecting production in various industries and that it was imperative that CEC joined efforts with Zesco to address the problem through the use of gas turbines.
Ms Nawakwi said in some industries, the load-shedding was taking over three hours, a thing he said was retrogressive for economic development.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2005 The Times of Zambia. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
