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Signed by President Hakainde Hichilema at the Zambia Mining and Investment Insaka conference in Lusaka on 13 October 2025 and gazetted as Statutory Instrument No. 68 of 2025 under the Geological and Minerals Development Act, 2022 (Act No. 11 of 2022). Enters into force 1 January 2026.
The SI establishes a two-tier local-content procurement obligation:
Tier 1 — Core mining goods and services (drilling consumables, reagents, mill liners, grinding media, blasting accessories, lubricants, mining-grade explosives, conveyor belts, PPE, mineral-analysis laboratory services, etc.): every holder of a mining right or mineral-processing licence must, within six months of commencement (i.e. by 1 July 2026), reserve at least 20% of its annual procurement budget for Zambian-owned or citizen-empowered companies. Progressive escalation:
| Commencement year | Minimum reservation (core) |
|---|---|
| Year 1 (by 1 Jul 2026) | 20% |
| Year 2 (2028) | 25% |
| Year 3 (2029) | 35% |
| Year 5 (2031) | 40% (target) |
A 15% price-preference margin applies during bid evaluation for qualifying local suppliers in the core tier.
Tier 2 — Non-core / ancillary services (catering, security, haulage of personnel, cleaning, gardening, courier, etc.): 100% reserved exclusively for Zambian-owned companies from commencement — full statutory carve-out barring foreign-supplier competition in ancillary services.
Compliance: annual local-content plans must be submitted to the Director of Large-Scale Mining and Mineral Investment Promotion; quarterly procurement reports are required. The Minerals Regulation Commission (MRC — established under the 2024 MRC Act) has oversight authority. Non-compliance carries a minimum fine of ZMW 400,000 plus ZMW 60,000 per day for continuing violations.
This SI is the third and operationally decisive instrument in a three-act Zambian resource-policy build-out:
1. 2024-08-27 Critical Minerals Strategy — sets the national vision and local-value-add objectives (parent strategy). 2. 2024-12-20 Minerals Regulation Commission Act — creates the MRC as the statutory compliance and enforcement body (parent regulator). 3. SI No. 68/2025 (this instrument) — installs the binding procurement-quota floor with a hard escalation schedule, operationalising both prior instruments.
The structure parallels Tanzania GN 563/2025 (local-content mining amendment) and Tanzania Finance Act 2025 mining amendments but with a stronger progressive-ratchet design. Indonesia's TKDN regime and Mongolia's State Great Khural Resolution 62/2025 are wider-context structural peers in the EM resource-nationalism procurement-quota wave.
Vedanta (Konkola), Glencore (Mopani), and CNMC operations face a compliance clock: local procurement share must reach 20% of core-goods budget by July 2026 or face daily fines.
face displacement as procurement quotas tighten; local Zambian distributors and JV structures are incentivised by the 15% bid preference.
without Zambian-ownership status face full exclusion from day-one (1 Jan 2026); this is operationally more disruptive than the phased core-goods schedule.
can engineer local-content compliance at lower cost than legacy operators.
loads it with a large compliance-monitoring mandate from day one.
citizen-empowerment supplier qualification definitions?
provisions for foreign investors (e.g. ZM-UK BIT, ZM-China BIT)?