Zambia has resisted the global economic crisis with a pick-up in growth, the latest Standard Chartered Bank Global Focus on the outlook for Zambia entitled “An Uneasy Transition” has indicated.

The Bank’s outlook has indicated that provisional data on Zambia’s 2009 gross domestic product (GDP) has shown that Zambia was one of the few countries that grew faster last year than in 2008, despite the economic crisis.

Standard Chartered Bank Regional Head of Research, Ms. Razia Khan has said Zambia is one of the few countries to grow faster in 2009 with a surge in copper output on earlier investment plans mitigating the impact of the crisis.

Ms. Khan said while the trend of growth has been rising for some time and despite otherwise-subdued activity on the Copperbelt, Zambia benefited in 2009 from a multi-year investment cycle at its largest mine.

She said the investment series led to an expansion in the mining sector by 21.4 percent in 2009, an expansion which was enhanced by a 15.5 percent growth in construction and 7.1 percent rise in maize harvest.

However, Ms. Khan said policy incentives should be re-examined for growth to reach its potential across various sectors, especially the tourism sector which the World Bank said was growing at a slower pace than Africa’s average.