Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2667 actions· ✨ 89 recent

Zambia's Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Industry gazetted Statutory Instrument No. 17 of 2026 on 20 March 2026 (effective 27 March 2026), replacing a prior outright export prohibition on sulphuric acid with a permit-based export control regime under the Control of Goods Act (Chapter 421). The instrument was triggered by an acute domestic shortage after multiple major Zambian copper smelters entered simultaneous extended maintenance shutdowns in 2025, collapsing by-product acid production. As the dominant supplier of sulphuric acid to DRC hydrometallurgical copper and cobalt mines, Zambia's restriction disrupted leaching operations across the DRC's oxide-ore processing chain. A partial easing began in May 2026 as smelter capacity recovered, with company-specific export authorisations issued to Chambishi Copper Smelter and Mopani Copper Mines.

Zambia enacted the Income Tax (Amendment) (No. 2) Act No. 17 of 2025, assented to 23 December 2025 and effective 1 January 2026, introducing two mining-specific fiscal provisions. First, interest deductibility is capped at 30% of tax EBITDA for all companies, with unrelieved interest carry-forwardable for up to five years (general) or ten years for entities in mining and electricity generation. Second, mining companies deriving at least 75% of gross income in foreign exchange from outside Zambia may maintain their books of accounts in US dollars, reducing FX translation risk for dollar-denominated operators. Both measures are structurally distinct from the concurrent Act No. 10 of 2025 (Minimum Alternative Tax and loss carry-forward cap).

Zambia's Statutory Instrument No. 68 of 2025 under the Geological and Minerals Development Act 2022 establishes the first binding procurement-quota local-content regime in the Zambian copper-cobalt mining sector, entering into force 1 January 2026. Mining and mining-related companies must reserve a minimum 20% of their annual procurement budget for Zambian-owned or citizen-empowered suppliers of core mining goods and services, escalating to 25% in year two and 35% in year three, targeting 40% within five years. All non-core ancillary services (catering, security, haulage, cleaning, gardening) are reserved exclusively for Zambian-owned companies. The instrument operationalises the Minerals Regulation Commission created under the 2024 MRC Act and completes the ZM resource-nationalism statute stack.

Zambia enacted the Income Tax (Amendment) Act No. 10 of 2025 on 8 August 2025, gazetted 19 August 2025, introducing three interlocking fiscal measures. First, a 1% Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT) on annual turnover applies to all companies and partnerships, creditable against standard income tax with a five-year carry-forward — directly raising the floor tax burden on large copper and cobalt mining groups that have historically reported low taxable profits. Second, the 50% annual loss carry-forward cap (previously mining-sector-specific) is universalised, reducing the tax-shelter advantage for capital-intensive mining projects with front-loaded losses. Third, withholding tax on government-securities interest is raised from 15% to 20%.

Zambia's Geological and Minerals Development Act, 2025 (Act No. 2 of 2025) was assented to on 8 April 2025, gazetted 15 April 2025, and entered into force 13 June 2025 via a dedicated Commencement Order. The Act reorganises the Ministry of Mines and Minerals Development's executive capacity by establishing three statutory directorates — Geological Survey; Artisanal, Small-Scale Mining and Value Addition; and Large-Scale Mining and Mineral Investment Promotion — and creates a dedicated Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Fund providing grants and capacity-building loans to the informal sector. It functions as a sibling statute to the Minerals Regulation Commission Act, 2024 (No. 14/2024) and is the enabling parent Act for the Local Content Regulations (SI No. 68/2025), completing Zambia's post-2024 three-Act resource-nationalism legislative stack.

Zambia's Parliament enacted the Property Transfer Tax (Amendment) Act No. 27 of 2024, assented to by President Hichilema on 24 December 2024 and in force from 1 January 2025. The Act introduces a first-ever dedicated Property Transfer Tax (PTT) schedule for mining rights: 10% of realised value on transfers of mining licences and mineral processing licences, and 8% on transfers of exploration licences. The measure directly raises the transaction cost of copper and cobalt mine acquisitions, stake transfers, and licence assignments across the Zambia Copperbelt. It is the fifth distinct fiscal or governance instrument enacted since 2024 in Zambia's rolling reform of its mining regulatory architecture.

The Minerals Regulation Commission Act, No. 14 of 2024 repeals and replaces Zambia's 2015 Mines and Minerals Development Act in its entirety, establishing a new autonomous Minerals Regulation Commission (MRC) as the country's central mining-sector regulator together with a standalone Mining Appeals Tribunal. The Act restructures licensing, royalty administration, monitoring and enforcement, and creates a dedicated dispute-resolution architecture separating regulatory and adjudicatory functions. Assented to on 20 December 2024 and gazetted on 26 December 2024, the Act took effect on 13 June 2025 pursuant to the Minerals Regulation Commission Act, 2024 (Commencement) Order, 2025 (SI 42 of 2025) signed by the Minister of Mines and Minerals Development on 3 June 2025.

The Pleno of Panama's Supreme Court of Justice unanimously declared Law 406 of 20 October 2023 — which ratified the renewed mining-concession contract between the Panamanian State and Minera Panamá S.A. (a subsidiary of Canada's First Quantum Minerals) — unconstitutional in its entirety. The ruling, delivered 27 November 2023 and published in Gaceta Oficial No. 29922 on 2 December 2023, found violations of 25 constitutional articles and ordered the orderly closure of the Cobre Panamá open-pit copper mine, which had produced ~350,000 t/yr of copper (~1% of global mined supply) and accounted for ~5% of Panama's GDP. The decision triggered a de-facto Panama-wide moratorium on new large-scale metals concessions and pending ICSID arbitration claims by First Quantum and Korea Resources / KORES (COFINPRO).

Panama's Asamblea Nacional enacted Ley 407 on 3 November 2023, sanctioned by President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen and published in Gaceta Oficial Digital N° 29904 of the same date. The law declares an indefinite moratorium on the granting of concessions for exploration, extraction, transportation, and benefit of metallic mining throughout national territory under the precautionary principle, bars the Ministerio de Comercio e Industrias (MICI) from issuing any new concessions and requires flat rejection of all pending applications from the date of enactment. Ley 407 constitutes the legislative instrument in the paired judicial-legislative architecture under which Panama effectively exits large-scale metals mining: it operates as the prospective, horizontal concession ban, while the Corte Suprema's November 2023 Sentencia (filed separately) is the retrospective judicial nullification of the Cobre Panamá contract. Together they structurally withdraw ~1% of global mined copper supply and affect ~5% of Panama's GDP.

The Mines and Minerals Development (Amendment) Act, No. 29 of 2022 restructures Zambia's Mineral Royalty Tax (MRT) on copper from a flat rate to a four-band price-linked sliding scale, effective 1 January 2023. Under the new regime, copper royalties range from 4% of norm value when the LME price is below USD 4,000/tonne to 10% when prices exceed USD 7,000/tonne — at prevailing LME copper prices (~USD 9,000–10,000/t in 2024–2026), the effective rate is 10%, one of the highest copper royalty rates in the global copper belt. The Act also codifies flat royalty rates for other base metals (5%), gemstones (6%), and precious metals (6%), and abolishes the prior flat-rate copper royalty that applied regardless of commodity-cycle position, materially increasing state rent capture in high-price environments while preserving a 4% floor for project viability at low prices.

Natural Resources Canada published Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy on 8 December 2022, committing $3.8 billion CAD over eight years (drawn from Budget 2022 and the Fall Economic Statement 2022) to develop Canada's position across the critical-minerals value chain. The strategy designates 31 priority minerals, sets six strategic pillars (data and geoscience, investment and trade, indigenous participation, workforce development, regulatory environment, and sustainability), and explicitly positions Canada as the preferred FTA-partner supplier for the US Inflation Reduction Act's domestic-content requirements under CUSMA/USMCA.

The Income Tax (Amendment) Act, 2021 (Act No. 43 of 2021), assented 30 December 2021 and in force from 1 January 2022, re-introduces the deductibility of Mineral Royalty Tax (MRT) paid under the Mines and Minerals Development Act, 2015 when computing a mining company's taxable income for corporate income tax purposes. The Act removes mineral royalty from the list of non-deductible expenditures in section 44 of the Income Tax Act, reversing a non-deductibility rule that had applied since a 2015-era amendment and that mining companies and industry stakeholders had argued produced double taxation of the same revenue stream. Deductibility is conditional on the royalty having actually been paid for the charge year.