Green Party President Peter Sinkamba has advised the Minister of Finance Margret Mwanakatwe to consider selling toxic assets owned by Government in all mining companies as a way to redeem Eurobonds and high-interest Chinese loans.

Commenting on the 2019 national budget that is expected to be presented to parliament this Friday, the Green Party Leader hopes that the Finance Minister will focus more on viable fiscal discipline and asset optimization strategies with primary focus to dismantle pressing debts, especially high interest Chinese loans and Eurobonds.

He has cited sale of ZCCM-IH shares in privatized mines as one of the key strategies that Government could adopt to generate sufficient funds to liquidate such loans.

“I have shared with Ms. Mwanakatwe some of the strategies that she could employ to dismantle the debts. I strongly believe that offloading toxic assets in one sure strategy to sustainably dismantle these debts,” Mr. Sinkamba said.

“Government is loaded with too many toxic assets. I made this very clear to her in our last meeting. In addition to what I shared with her, I think she should also consider ZCCM-IH toxic assets.”

He says these assets have experienced a significant drop in value and lack an active market where they can be easily sold.

He is of the view that government is better off selling such toxic assets through a trade-off, say with China, to off-set Chinese or indeed extend to liquidating other loans such as Eurobonds.

“The case in point is that ZCCM-IH dividends received from all mining assets are worthless. For example, during its 78th Meeting held in March 2018, the ZCCM-IH Board disclosed that in the last five years, it only received dividends worth K251million. In dollars terms, ZCCM-IH received a paltry $25 million from all of its mining assets in five years. On average, this is a paltry $5 million per year. This is like what some footballers get per month. Take for example Messi and Ronaldo, they receive salaries worth over $50 million per annum or roughly $5 million per month” he added.

“My point is that the dividend policy for Government in mining has lamentably failed. It is not worthy to have multi-billion shares in an investment that fails to generate as little profit as $50 million in 18 years. Hopefully Ms. Mwanakatwe will take cognizance of this fact and thereby sell of ZCCM-IH shares in all mining companies apart from the one per cent Golden Share,” Mr. Sinkamba said.

Mr. Sinkamba has disclosed that setting off Chinese loans with ZCCM-IH shares at this moment when China is hungry for resources could generate in excess of $5 billion additional income.

“Waiting to dispose these shares beyond this point could be as fatal as the Chiluba Government mistake on the Kafue Consortium deal of the 1990s,” he said.