Zambia has been urged to restrict the purchase of copper in its currency rather than in dollar to immediately benefit from the high copper prices, Times of Zambia reported Wednesday.

David Punabantu, a local economist, was quoted as saying the immediate measures that Zambia should take to benefit from this high prices are to allow the purchase of copper in kwacha.

He said the mining companies should not be allowed to regulate the offload of the U.S. dollar realized from the selling of copper but that the commercial banks should be allowed to control the foreign exchange by converting the dollar into the local currency to buy copper.

"A Zambian can not go to America or Britain to buy any item in Zambian kwacha. They will insist that you convert the money in their own currency first. This is what should be happening in Zambia when buying copper.

As the situation is as the moment, the mining companies are the ones controlling the offloading of dollar on the market which is not supposed to be the case, he said.

He said there should be policy put in place where all the mining companies should take all the dollars to the commercial bank to be converted into kwacha and use for the operations and later reconverted their kwacha into dollar before they externalized it.

The prices of copper in the world market have been increasing but Zambia has not benefited much from the high prices because the mines are owned by the private sector, according to the newspaper.

Source: Xinhua