600 Nakonde illegal structures demolished
OVER 600 trading shops have been demolished in Nakonde for being built on a buffer zone (the border line which separates Zambia and Tanzania) as they contributed to the increased smuggling activities at the border post.
The demolition exercise follows a commitment made between President Edgar Lungu and Tanzanian President, John Magufuli, on October 5, 2019 to relocate all traders on the buffer zone from both countries as they promoted smuggling.
Nakonde District Administrative Officer, Alex Sinkala, said shops which had been demolished were promoting and encouraging smuggling activities as traders could easily move goods from one country to another without paying due taxes.
“Over 600 shops were built on the buffer zone. I may not be precise with the numbers but they were over 600. There will be measures to continue monitoring so that we do not have a situation where it comes back to how it was. This used to be a high productivity for illicit trade like smuggling and the like,” Mr Sinkala said.
He told Journalists in Nakonde on Wednesday during a site visit of the buffer zone, that over 95 percent of works had been done at the demolition site.
Tanzania, Mr Sinkala said, was first to demolish the shops from its side before Zambia started the exercise.
He explained that Tanzania did it first because it had given a closer ultimatum from the time the two Presidents entered the agreement while the Zambian Government had given traders up to January 4, 2020 to relocate to suitable premises.
“We could not tell who was getting things from which country so it was felt that we needed to have a clear border, a boundary that separates the two countries.
“So, it was agreed that we clear the buffer so that probably this will be, in a way, towards helping to curb smuggling between the two countries and maximise on revenue collection for the two countries,” Mr Sinkala said.
According to the Barclays bank daily report, commercial banks posted the local unit at K14.620/14.670 per dollar unmoved from Tuesday’s close and ended the day at K14.650/14.700, 3 ngwee lower on a close to close basis.
“Near term, the local unit is likely to trade on the back foot mainly due to increased dollar appetite and subdued inflows,” the report says.
The report says the volumes of funds traded on the interbank continue to trade range bound moving from K511.00 million to K367.00 million with the liquidity levels slightly reducing from K1,423.15 million to K1,348.53 million. “The overnight interbank rate was little changed dropping 1 bp. to 12.53 percent.
The government will be in the local market trading on the shorter side of the curve in today’s primary T-bill auction with a target amount of K950m,” the report says. Oil prices, the report says fell on Thursday as the death toll from the new virus in China climbed to 170 and more airlines cancelled flights to the country’s major cities, while rising U.S. crude inventories added to the negative tone.
“Brent was down 35 cents, or 0.6 percent, at $59.46 a barrel, having risen 0.5 percent on Wednesday. U.S. crude CLc1 was down 30 cents, or 0.6 percent, at $53.03 a barrel, after dropping 0.3 percent in the previous session,” the report says.
According to the report Gold prices edged higher on Thursday after the U.S. Federal Reserve Chair’s remarks that the new coronavirus outbreak could impact China’s economy in the short term boosted the safe-haven metal’s appeal.
“Spot gold rose 0.1 percent to $1,578.95 per ounce and U.S. gold futures GCv1 gained 0.5 percent to $1,578.90,” the report says. And the report says copper prices fell to near a four-month low on Thursday, set for the 11th straight session of losses, as the rising death toll from the coronavirus sparked fears of an economic slowdown in top metals consumer China.