The Minerals Council South Africa has welcomed the publication of the Exploration Strategy and the Exploration Implementation Plan documents by the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE).

The council will study both documents to analyse and understand what the DMRE has changed since the Minerals Council, the Council for Geoscience and the regulator started negotiating the Exploration Implementation Plan in 2020.

"While we have early concerns with the quality of the drafting of the Exploration Strategy for the Mining Industry of South Africa, we also note there are numerous changes to the draft Exploration Implementation Plan that was agreed in January 2021 and which we need time to examine and understand before we are able to comment.

"With South Africa ranked for the first time in the ten least desirable of 84 global mining jurisdictions in the Fraser Institute’s Mining Companies Survey 2021, as measured by the Investment Attractiveness Index, the mining industry needs investor-friendly regulations and policies to ensure sustainable, inclusive growth to benefit all stakeholders," the council stated.

It added that one of the most urgent matters for the DMRE to address was the rapid implementation of a transparent, functional, corruption-free, online cadastre system to replace the failed South African Mineral Resources Administration System, also known as Samrad, that has stymied exploration, expansion of the junior mining sector and growth of the South African mining industry.

The Minerals Council and its members have offered financial and technical assistance to the DMRE to urgently implement a readily available, internationally proven, and off-the-shelf solution, it pointed out.

Newswire Bloomberg reported on April 12 that the exploration strategy published by the DMRE had set a target to attract $900-million a year in mining exploration expenditure by 2025.

That would be the equivalent of 5% of global exploration spend.