The Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) has approved 67 Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) for the month of March 2017 worth over $440 thousand.

The approved projects are in energy, tourism, urban development, agriculture and forestry, prospecting and mining as well as manufacturing and processing sectors.

“Out of the 83 projects considered, 67 projects were approved, 12 were deferred, two project documents were upgraded from Environmental Project Brief to Environmental Impact Statement and two projects were rejected,” said ZEMA in a statement.

ZEMA said deferred projects were pending additional information from the developers and they were mainly from energy and urban development sectors.

“The Agency approved projects with an estimated investment of USD440,129,973. The total estimated investment for projects considered by ZEMA between January and March, 2017 is over USD1,205,153,000,” said ZEMA.