THE United Party for National Development administration, through Finance and National Planning minister Situmbeko Musokotwane, unveiled its last national budget under its first term, which embodies its economic performance since 2021.
Crafted against the backdrop of strong economic structures or pillars which have been raised in the last four years, the 2026 national budget proves that Zambia is ripe for economic rebound.
External debt stock has been restructured, the investment environment has been addressed, the mines which had either stopped producing or produced lower minerals have been unlocked, the agricultural sectors has been boosted while measures to address the menacing energy challenges have been heightened.
Before that the economic growth was low, the debt had reached unsustainable levels anti-climaxed by default, fiscal space or public finances were constrained while the mining contribution towards the economy was at its lowest ebb, mainly due to closure of some mines.
The mining fortunes had been dwindling so much that at one time copper production figures sagged below 700,000 tonnes per year, a 14- year low, mainly due to closure of some big mining units.
The copper production in 2021 dropped to 800,696 tonnes from 837,996 tonnes recorded the previous year.
The Zambia Chamber of Mines then attributed the reduced copper output mainly to operational challenges arising from a lack of recapitalisation due to an unattractive mining tax regime.
Mining companies operating in Zambia had long complained about what they called “double taxation,” with mineral royalty payments not treated as a deductible expense when calculating corporate income tax since 2019.
That coupled with what obtained at both Konkola Copper Mine (KCM) and Mopani Copper Mine (MCM) had compounded the situation.
It had made the mining outlook bleak by the time the New Dawn administration took over the government in 2021.
The latter part of the Patriotic Front (PF) rule had seen the grounding of the operations at the two mining giants, among other dismal performance.
The KCM had been closed due to a high level of indebtedness and threats of insolvency, lack of investment in developing new ore sources, failure to adopt cost-effective production methods and many other operational challenges.
For MCM, former owners, Glencore placed some of its operations under care and maintenance in 2020 due to challenging market conditions.
Despite the initial resistance by the Zambian government to that move of temporary closure, things changed leading to Glencore selling its stake to ZCCM-Investment Holdings.
Five years down the lane, the two mining units are in full operation and the ownership situations have been resolved while new mines have either come or are coming on stream.
So far, the First Quantum Minerals’s S3 Expansion Project has been commissioned to enhance copper annual output to 270,000 tonnes while there has been expansion of operating mines like Barrick Lumwana-Super Pit and others with a combined production capacity of 593,000 tonnes per annum.
The new ones like Mwekera Copper Mine, Mingomba Mine and Kitumba Mine have a combined production capacity of 700,000 tonnes per annum.
It is these projects and measures that make Dr Musokotwane and the entire government buoyant that the second largest copper producer will, this year, attain the target of one million tonnes of copper production.
‘This positive performance has been on the back of a stable mining tax and regulatory regime and settling disputes out of court. This has seen the reopening of some old mines, new investments, and revitalisation of activity at existing mines,” he says.
For the 2024/2025 farming season, the timely distribution of increased inputs to farmers, particularly those under government support, culminated into record-high maize production of 3.7 million tonnes.
This is likely to be repeated or surpassed in the 2025/2026 farming season, if God favours Zambia with suitable amounts of rainfall.
While the investors, particularly the foreign ones, had started shunning investing in the country by 2021, the situation has changed as the country has been transformed into one of the most preferred investment destinations.
“Madam, upon assuming office in 2021, we pledged to grow the economy through industrialisation and economic diversification. Over the past four years, the country has attracted significant investments in the mining, agriculture, tourism, energy and manufacturing sectors,” Dr Musokotwane says.
According to him, manufacturing is among the sectors which have attracted investments of more than US $4 billion.
Similarly, as at end- 2021, the Lusaka South Multi-Facility Economic Zone had 17 operational companies with an investment portfolio of $264 million and about 7,000 jobs.
Four years later, investments worth $1.4 billion from 20 companies have come through with more than 31,000 jobs created.
The Zambia Development Agency (ZDA) puts the figure of actualised investments over the four-year period of between 2021 and 2025 at $12.2 billion.
These are investments across sectors like mining, manufacturing, energy and agriculture.
Consequently, over the last four years, non-traditional export earnings grew by 37.3 per cent and were $3.54 billion last year.
This was mainly driven by agricultural and manufactured products.
Dr Musokotwane says the gross international reserves rose to $4.9 billion, at the end of July 2025 from $4.3 billion at the end of December 2024.
This, in terms of import cover, is equivalent to 4.8 months.
Bank of Zambia (BoZ) governor, Denny Kalyalya says that some of the key drivers were the disbursements under the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme as well as the net statutory reserve deposits.
Dr Kalyalya said in a presentation during the 2026 national budget symposium on Monday that the disbursement of project funds by the World Bank Group and BoZ foreign exchange purchases also contributed to the feat.
Tourism continued to live up to its status as one of the priority sectors and has grown exponentially from 2021 and before when the country was struggling to attain the psychological figure of one million international tourist arrivals per year.
In 2024 the international arrivals were 2.2 million compared to 1.1 million in 2022.
Both Dr Musokotwane and Tourism minister Rodney Sikumba attribute this to key measures that the Government introduced which include stronger international marketing and visa waivers for nationals of the most important markets.
Most of these superlative achievements could have not been recorded without addressing the issue of debt which had by 2020 started choking the country’s economy.
The New Dawn Administration which made a commitment to restructure the external debt and ensure debt sustainability is delivering.
It has, positively so, reached agreements on debt treatment for approximately 94 per cent of the debt within the confines of the restructuring exercise.
With these and many other feats scored so far the stage seems set for Zambia’s unprecedented economic growth under the new dawn for the next five years post 2026 general elections.