ZAMBIA has this year experienced economic difficulties, emanating mainly from the effects of natural and global trends.
The fall of the Kwacha, increased periods of power load-shedding and skyrocketing prices of goods and services have stood out overshadowing other economic highlights of the year.
In the year which opened with the country’s unintended presidential polls as the result of the loss of another seating President, Zambia has weathered the economic storm.
The holding of an unexpected  presidential election also entailed unplanned public expenditure which contributed towards the widening fiscal deficit for the year.
The year in which former Defence Minister Edgar Lungu was elected  sixth Republican President of the copper-rich country saw various changes in the economic sector.
Just before the year could even start, threats emerged from among  mining investors over the Parliament-approved tax regime for the mining sector.
Mining houses, through the Chamber of Mines of Zambia (CMZ), said as a result of the new tax regime, mines would during the year, cut on some operations which would result in copper production losses in excess of 158,000 tonnes and loss of more than 12,000 jobs.
Barrick Gold Corporation announced that it would initiate procedures to suspend operations at its Lumwana Copper Mine (LCM) while major projects were expected to be cancelled at Mopani and Kansanshi Mines.
The owners of Lumwana Mine had as a result, planned to put the mine under care and maintenance, a development that would have rendered more than 4,000 miners jobless.
After being elected President, Mr Lungu had to move swiftly to stop the job-loss disaster which was imminent for the miners and had been a campaign issue among opposition parties which had contested presidential elections earlier.
Barely a month in office, President Lungu on February 23, announced that the Government and mining houses had already opened negotiations over the matter.
Under the 2015 National Budget, Government had initially increased mineral royalty taxes from six per cent to eight per cent for underground mines and 20 per cent for open pit mines.
Within February, retained Finance Minister Alexander Chikwanda, announced the realignment of the Value Added Tax (General) Administrative Rule Number 18 on proof of export requirements.
This resolved another contention which had led to the Zambia Revenue Authority (ZRA) withholding more than US$600 million for exporters in the mining sector alone.
In April, Cabinet approved the Income Tax (Amendment) Bill of 2015, which sought to implement proposed changes to the mining tax regime and increase corporate income tax for mining operations from zero per cent to 30 per cent.
Among many other changes the mineral royalty tax which the mines cried foul about, was reduced to nine per cent for open-cast mining operations and six per cent for underground mining operations.
Later in the year, these and many other changes to the Bill were passed into law by Parliament.
The full import of these changes which took effect on July 1, however, included the Government’s loss of more than K2 billion in revenue which was initially projected to come from the sector.
The positive part was that more than 12,000 jobs for miners had been secured as a result.
The issue of miners’ job losses however, refused to die down and later reared its ugly face.
Due to continued fall in copper prices on the international market, local mining houses mooted the downsizing of their workforces.
For instance, Mopani alone projected that it would lay off more than 7,000 workers but following the Government intervention, that number was severed by more than half to about 3,051.
Another issue which continued plaguing the country is poor performance of the Kwacha.
On March 3, Mr Chikwanda told Parliament that partly, the Kwacha was being hurt by the strengthening US Dollar.
The Kwacha had since 2013 depreciated by 24.3 per cent against the dollar while the Euro had depreciated by 20.5 per cent, the South African Rand by 11.7 per cent and the British pound by 7.9 per cent.
For Zambia the situation could have been taken downhill by another external factor, the drop in the prices of copper, the nation’s main export product.
In the first half of the year, copper prices averaged around $5,160 per tonne and have currently sagged below the $5,000-per-tonne mark.
Resultant reduction in the value of exports as opposed to the rising in the value of imports also added another dimension, widening the trade deficit.
Locally, the continued widening gap between demand and supply for the dollar into the local market drove the free-fall of the Kwacha this year.
During the year, President Lungu appointed Denny Kalyalya as Bank of Zambia (BoZ) Governor taking over from Michael Gondwe.
Having been sworn in at the time of the Kwacha’s first quarter anticlimax, Dr Kalyalya’s foremost assignment was to revive the local currency.
Mr Lungu did not mince his words on that one!
So, the BoZ under Dr Kalyalya, who previously served as Central Bank deputy governor before leaving to ply an international career, introduced various measures.
Seemingly, the measures undertaken did not help much because by November, the value of the Kwacha had plummeted to K14 per dollar, its record low in a long time.
This obviously triggered effects on other macroeconomic objectives including inflation which reached the all-time high of 19.5 per cent in November.
This was compounded by the fact that the fall in the Kwacha had become a reference point for all traders wanting to increase the prices even for those products which, like backyard tomatoes, had no foreign exchange bearing.
Currently, the Kwacha is hovering around K11 per dollar while for this month, the inflation is likely to slightly drop or remain at 19.5 per cent.
Because of most of these challenges, the country is unlikely to achieve most of the specific broad socio- economic policy objectives for the year which include:
(a) Achieve a real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of above seven per cent (which was revised to 4.6 per cent)
(b) Achieve an end year inflation rate of no more than seven  per cent (which currently stands at 19.5 per cent)
(c) Increase international reserves to at least four months of import cover (which was 4.4 months in September)
(d) Raise domestic revenue collections to at least 18.5 per cent of the GDP
(e) Contain domestic borrowing to not more than two per cent of GDP; and
(f) Accelerate the diversification of the economy.
For the electricity situation, while officially opening Parliament in September, Mr Lungu said load-shedding had affected everyone.
The current power load-shedding of up to eight hours per day has been as the result of  low water levels in the  Kariba Dam and other relevant water bodies.
“I come to address this House at the time when the nation is facing the most challenging energy shortage since the founding of this nation. The power rationing due to reduced water levels in our power generation dams has impacted severely on the lives of our people.
“I hear the cry of that welder whose income has dwindled due to power load-shedding; that hairdresser, that chicken runner who cannot put up with repeated power disruptions…” Mr Lungu said.
On a positive note, the electricity deficit has led to the authority introducing the much-talked about cost-reflective tariffs as way of wooing investors to the sector.
Additionally, the Government and the private sector have come up with various projects aimed at increasing power generation and distribution capacities as well as establishing alternative power sources.
Having weathered the 2015 economic storm, one can only hope that things will be better for Zambia in 2016 and beyond!