Panama’s President blames previous gov’t for First Quantum mine crisis
The Cobre Panama mine paid the price for the accumulated national discontent, said President José Raúl Mulino.
Vedanta Resources, owned by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, said it has reached an “advanced stage” of executing agreements with the Zambian government over Konkola Copper Mines Plc assets that have been in provisional liquidation for about four years.
“Vedanta is alive to the fact that the talks have taken a little longer than initially anticipated,” it said in a statement on Sunday. “The company is firmly committed to the process.”
The Zambian government placed Konkola, of which Vedanta owns 79.4%, into provisional liquidation in 2019, and since then has been locked in legal battles with the company over the asset. The dispute has caused output to plunge.
Vedanta has pledged to invest $1 billion in the assets to double annual integrated production to 100,000 tons of copper, with the potential to 200,000 tons in the medium term.
Separately, Konkola struck a deal with Copperbelt Energy Corp., a Zambian power supplier, over a debt the mining company owed it. The agreement will see KCM paying the company $20 million in installments.
There’s one matter left to agree on before reaching a deal with Vedanta, Zambian Mines Minister Paul Kabuswe told reporters on Friday, without saying what it was. “We are counting days, it’s no longer months,” he said in Lusaka, the capital.
(By Taonga Mitimingi and Matthew Hill)
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