Indebted Zambia pays $400m in VAT refunds to mining firms
Zambia paid 8.5 billion kwacha ($400 million) in value-added tax refunds to mining companies last year, the head of the tax authority said on Wednesday, equal to about 3.5% of the external debt that the southern African country is struggling to repay. Zambia, Africa’s second-largest copper producer, is negotiating with creditors to try to get debt relief, after it defaulted on a $42.5 million coupon in November. The economy was already struggling even before the coronavirus pandemic owing to low prices for copper, its main export, and the IMF had classified it…
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