Botswana was continuing to review its minerals legislative framework to attract nondiamond miners to the heavily diamond-dependent country, its Geological Survey Department director Tiyapo Ngwisanyi said last week.

Opening the tenth Botswana Resource Sector Conference, Ngwisanyi said that Botswana’s immediate economic concern was to lessen its dependence on diamonds through a fiscal regime for nondiamond minerals, which was predictable, had low royalty rates and a competitive variable-rate income tax formula.

To make Botswana a more investor-friendly country, government was continuing to review pieces of legislation such as the Income Tax Act, the Mines and Minerals Act and the Diamond Cutting and Polishing Act.

“It’s through this attractiveness that we aim to entice companies to search for nondiamond minerals in the hope that this will lead to a broadening of the mineral production base of Botswana,” Ngwisanyi said.

Like economic diversification, this too was a long process as not all exploration succeeded in finding mineral deposits that were economic and justified further development into producing mining projects.

While the adverse global economic situation had in the past conspired against significant exploitation of Botswana’s nondiamond mineral endowment, it was gratifying to see that situation had changed for, particularly, coal, of which there was a resource of 212-billion tons, part of which was being trans- formed into reserves through ongoing private-sector exploration.

Since 2005, three new nondiamond mines had been commissioned across Botswana, including Mupane gold mine, Mowana copper mine and Boseto copper project, while the coal sector had been a focus of investor interest.

Coal exploration has increased significantly, with several companies advancing exploration projects towards mining projects.

Botswana continues to be ranked favourably by various international institutions on the basis of having competitive mining laws, low sovereign risk, security of tenure and a low incidence of corruption.