afrol News, 19 May - The Zambian president, Rupiah Banda has has appointed a seven-man panel to formulate policies that will guide exploration and exploitation of oil resources in the country's northwestern and western provinces.

The committee made up of ministers and members of other top government, parastatal and private sectors mebers will be headed by the Minister of Mines and Minerals Development Maxwell Mwale.

Mr Banda has also confirmed to the committee the responsibility of awarding of exploration and exploitation licenses to possible investors.

Zambia which has over the years pride itself in the rich Copper and cobalt reserves in the Copperbelt province, discovered oil in the western provinces bordering Angola in 2006.

The country which is one of the worst hit by the global slowdown with most of its copper mines having had to close and lay-off workers, is slowly regaining production confidence with new investments coming into the mining sector, mainly from the Chinese investors.

Zambia was yesterday accepted as a new member of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Board (EITI) together with Albania, Burkina Faso and Mozambique.

Other African countries signed to the programme are Cameroon, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Republic of the Congo, São Tomé e Príncipe, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania.

Under the programme countries commit to a global standard for revenue transparency in the extractive industries. Through implementing the EITI, countries bring together companies, civil society and government representatives to monitor and account for payments being made to governments by extractives companies operating in their country.

By staff writer

© afrol News

Related pages and feature

Current afrol News Top Stories