By CHATULA KANGALI –
THE Zambian market is too small to have a metals exchange platform because of limited pool of metals in the country, the government has said.
Stakeholders have been calling for the establishment of metal exchange platform to  curb the  transfer  of pricing and  promote local  value  addition to the  mineral  value chain.
Mines and Mineral Development Permanent Secretary Paul Chanda, however,  said the local market was too small for a metal exchange platform.
He  said  if a metal exchange  was established,  only  copper could trade  as  other  minerals such  as  cobalt had  been depleted  while  the production of  nickel was  still uneconomical.
Mr Chanda said the country could not meet the cost of transporting metals to oversea buyers.
“ A metal exchange cannot  work in  Zambia because the  market  is too small, once  we  have  it,  we  can disadvantage  ourselves  in the  sale of copper.
“W e  do  not  even have a  variety  of metals to trade,  only  copper  can be  traded  as the  production of cobalt and nickel had become uneconomical,” he said.
Mr Chanda said copper producers in the country already had an established market and were using the London Metal Exchange (LME) for pricing.
He said Zambia was currently the seventh producer of copper in the world and was only contributing a small per cent of the metal on the world market.
He said  if Zambia establishes a metal exchange, the country could not compete with  LME as it  was the  only  approved platform  with professional and accredited  investors  trading on its  market.