Zimbabwe’s small-scale gold miners have set themselves a yearly production target of at least 7 t this year.

Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) spokesperson Dosman Mangisi says the federation is mobilising its 30 000 members to achieve this ambitious target.

The ZMF hopes to almost double its 2014 output of 3.9 t, the highest ever recorded by the small-scale gold mining industry since Zimbabwe’s stutter-and-stop economic recovery began with the introduction of a multicurrency economy in 2009.

Mangisi says the ZMF is lobbying both government and private-sector stakeholders for the provision of basic mechanised equipment and mining skills training for the small-scale gold mining sector, given the lead contributory role it has assumed in national gold production.

“Our target is to ensure that at least a quarter of the 30 000 small and medium-sized miners have the basic equipment to operate gold
mines. “We want to triple our annual gold output by 2018.”

Despite registering increases in yearly gold output since 2011, Zimbabwe’s small-scale miners face serious shortages of equipment, with some of the mines operating without any basic mining equipment at all.

Mangisi says nearly all the small-scale miners are hamstrung by capital constraints as no banks are willing to give them loans to cover
operating costs.

The small-scale miners group also wants government to do away with or amend unfavourable legislation, including the general criminalisation of alluvial gold panning, “hazy” rules governing the issuing and revocation of operating licences and hefty mining taxes, which are seen as insensitive to the poor financial state of start-up miners.

Most small-scale miners who are allocated mining claims when they do not have the capital and equipment to start operations have resorted to hiring armies of illegal gold panners to mine on condition that they process and sell all the gold to them at a fixed price.

The claim owners then use their mining licences to trade the gold on the formal market through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s (RBZ’s) gold refining subsidiary, Fidelity Printers & Refiners.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, gold deliveries to Fidelity Printers & Refiners increased by 20% from 926 kg in January last year to 1 111 kg in January this year.

Large-scale producers contributed 808.58 kg, up from 784.28 kg in January last year, while deliveries from small-scale miners more
than doubled from 141.51 kg in January 2014 to 303.05 kg this year.

Last year, Zimbabwe’s gold output stood at 13.5 t, narrowly missing the set target of 14.5 t. The overall contribution from small-scale miners was 3.9 t.

Some small-scale miners are set to benefit from a new $50-million fund set up by the RBZ to boost gold production by making capitalisation loans available to viable small-scale gold mining projects.

Through the Accelerated Gold Production Initiative AGPI, the RBZ hopes to increase gold production to 30 t/y by 2020, earning the country at least $1.5-billion in exports at current prices. The central bank projects that the country will produce at
least 15 t of gold this year.