Slating bad Chinese investment in Zambia was a major plank of
oppositionist Michael Sata’s electioneering but Beijing’s businessmen
are not worried
Immediately after
Michael Sata’s election as President of
Zambia on 22 September, global copper prices fell to their lowest point
in almost a year, hitting US$7,500 per tonne, amid fears that debt
problems in Europe would slow global growth. Government projections,
however, show that annual copper exports should reach 1 million tonnes
by 2012 and 1.5 mn. tn. by 2015. Asian investors have not been spooked
by President Sata’s hot pre-campaign rhetoric and are instead bolstered
by the prospects for copper production in the coming years. In early
October, Standard Bank signed a $500 mn. bridge financing deal with India’s
Vedanta Resources, the operators of the Konkola Copper Mines (see map).
Standard said that it is also working on a $700 mn. loan to finance new
investments.
Australian financial authorities are investigating the trading
activities of resource company executives in two lucrative takeover
deals
The latest attempt by a Chinese company to secure African mining assets
from Australian companies has hit the skids over concerns about insider
trading by Hanlong Mining. Several suspicious deals...
Parliamentary investigations expose a cosy relationship between the
South Korean government and the backers of a controversial diamond
project
President Lee Myung-bak’s government faces another corruption
scandal
linked to its African resource diplomacy after a little-known mining
company claimed to have made a record-shattering diamond discovery in
eastern Cameroon. A parliamentary...