|
Gone are the days when mining was just about extracting ore from
the ground, processing it and then selling it, says new South
African Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa, who sees
today’s mining as playing a more crucial role and being
linked to almost every sector that affects the country’s
economy, embracing chemicals, manufacturing and service industries.
Mpahlwa wants mining-industry-linked knowledge to be migrated into
global markets. Speaking at the AngloGold Ashanti launch in
Johannesburg, Mpahlwa says that, despite its risks and eventual
finite horizon, the future, for the time being, still lies in the
mining-industry-linked value-adding industrial sectors. For South
Africa to have a successful economy, Mpahlwa believes it needs to
package and sell the knowledge that it has acquired from its
successful involvement in the mining industry. His view is that the
country also needs to see how mining-industry-supporting
manufactured and electronic products can be packaged for sale to
international mining operations. He finds that all modern
industrial economies and successful industrialising countries have
recognised the importance of knowledge and value-adding industries
and have put substantial public and private sector resources into
developing these. He sees the AngloGold Ashanti merger as giving
life to and supporting the aims and objectives of the New
Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad), a programme
aimed at eradicating poverty and placing African countries on a
path of sustainable development and growth. As Africa’s
leading economy, he advocates that South Africa needs to play a
primary role in ensuring that Africa is no longer on the fringes of
the global economy. He sees this as being achievable through peace
and security, market access, private-sector development, health and
human resource develop-ment. Mpahlwa wants greater emphasis to be
placed on developing South Africa’s skills base and for
knowledge to be turned into products and expanding value-adding
industries. He regards the merger as an example of how South
African firms can move to the next level by participating in other
African countries, while at the same time investing in their own
economies and growing their private-sector enterprises. “Both
companies are leaders in their individual countries and the two
bring their experience, expertise and knowledge to the
table,” he says. Ashanti, which has survived under some of
the most difficult social, political and economic circumstances,
brings 100 years of continuous mining and its sought- after
orebodies, while AngloGold brings not only its experience and
capital, but also its deep-level expertise. At the end of the 2004
financial year, the companies together produced 6,6-million ounces
of gold and the combined entity is expected to become a
seven-million-ounce to a 7,5-million-ounce producer. AngloGold
Ashanti is now Africa’s largest gold-mining house and is
expected to contribute further to Nepad in general and to the
growth of the mining industry into other sectors in particular. |
|
