Zambia Announces Mining Tax Breaks, Pares Deficit in 2022 Budget

(Bloomberg) -- Zambia announced tax breaks for mining companies, drastically cut its budget deficit target and said it expects to conclude debt restructuring talks with creditors early next year. 

Mining royalties will be deductible from income taxes, Finance Minister Situmbeko Musokotwane told lawmakers Friday in his first budget speech since his party won power in August elections. He didn’t announce changes to the royalty rates. In 2019, the nation implemented the 10th change to the tax regime in 16 years.

The mining industry’s lobby group had complained for years that not being allowed to deduct royalties amounted to double taxation and deterred investment. Royalties are currently imposed at a sliding scale of 5.5% to 10%, depending on the copper price.

Shares in First Quantum Minerals Ltd., which accounts for more than half of Zambia’s copper output, rose as much as 5.3% in Toronto. Zambia’s $1 billion in Eurobonds due 2024 rose 0.3% to 80 cents on the dollar by 4:55 p.m. in London. A close at that level would be the highest since March 2019.

Deficit Trimmed 

The continent’s second-biggest producer of copper also plans a spending shortfall of 6.7% of gross domestic product in 2022, down from a revised estimate of 10.4% this year, the minister said. The government aims to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund next month that will anchor talks with creditors, he said.

Zambia’s economy has been buckling under a rapidly growing external debt burden taken on by the previous government, becoming the first pandemic-era sovereign defaulter nearly a year ago. The International Monetary Fund estimates that public debt reached 128.7% of GDP last year, one of the highest ratios on the continent. 

The government plans on using the Group of 20’s so-called Common Framework to restructure its more than $13 billion in external debt, and an economic program with the IMF will be key to those efforts.

“The task ahead of us is enormous,” Musokotwane said. “The journey to fix the economy starts now.”

The minister will give a detailed update to creditors on the IMF talks and next steps in the restructuring process on Nov. 2.  

Key Targets

Musokotwane set the following targets for the 2022 budget:

• Spending of 173 billion kwacha ($10 billion), or 37.1% of GDP and revenue and grants of 100.7 billion kwacha, or 21.6% of GDP
• Expenditure in 2021 is now forecast at 139 billion kwacha, vs 119.6 billion kwacha budget for this year
• Economic growth is seen at 3.5% in 2022 and 3.3% this year vs 1.8% target in the 2021 budget
• The fiscal deficit is forecast at 6.7% of GDP in 2022 and 10.4% in 2021, compared with this year’s target of 9.3%
• External debt servicing is seen at 51.3 billion kwacha
• Domestic borrowing will be limited to 5.2% of GDP

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