BOTSWANA – Botswana withdrew its decision to buy a 50% stake in South Africa’s Nkomati mine from OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel because it can’t afford the price tag of just under P3-billion ($279-million).
“The kind of situation we are in, where’s that money going to come from,” Khaulani Fichani, chairman of State-owned BCL, told reporters in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. BCL is now being managed by a liquidator.
In 2014, BCL agreed to buy 50% of the Nkomati nickel mine and 85% of Tati Nickel Mining, located in Botswana, from Norilsk, the world’s biggest producer of the metal, for $337-million. The company said in April it would raise $250-million in a bond sale to help fund the purchases.
Botswana shut BCL’s unprofitable copper and nickel mine, the country’s oldest, this month and began steps to liquidate it because it couldn’t afford to keep the company running, Mineral Resources Minister Sadique Kebonang said Saturday. The acquisitions were a way for the country to continue processing metals from other operations given its own shafts were close to the end of their lives.
African Rainbow Minerals, whose chairperson is South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, owns the other 50% of Nkomati.