The Post reports comments from European Union trade commissioner Peter Mandelson advised mining companies in Zambia to recognise their obligation to share their profits with Zambians. “Where companies are doing well from high prices then they have greater obligation to put back into the country in which they have invested…and I think that foreign countries in the mines will recognise the obligations from large returns to investment and the current high prices of mineral resources,” said Mandelson.
Mandelson has no role in the mining tax renegotiation and was in Zambia to discuss Economic Partnership Agreement talks with the East and Southern African trade ministers, and it's not the most interesting comment, but I thought it worth sharing as it shows a) how high profile the issue has become such that Mandelson feels the need to have a position, b) that the EU, of all donors has been one of the most supportive from the beginning of the discussion, and remains so. Of course it is in a sense in the interest of aid donors to Zambia that the country has alternative sources of revenue. And though the Anglo-Indian Vedanta Resources is housed on the London Stock Exchange, none of the mining companies is 'European' (one is Swiss).
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