The Zimbabwe government has, with immediate effect, repossessed 27 948 ha of ‘excess’ ground with platinum reserves held by Impala Platinum Holdings sub- sidiary Zimbabwe Platinum Mines (Zimplats).
Mines and Mining Development Minister Obert Mpofu says the land will be allocated to new investors as part of measures to boost mining activities. He adds that the repossessed ground will attract at least five new big investors.
“The Ministry will exercise its prerogative to ensure that all idle ground is repossessed and reallocated to other investors,” Mpofu says.
He explains that repossessing excess ground is part of a raft of measures that government has initiated to stimulate mining activity in line with growth targets envisaged in the Zimbabwe government’s Medium Term Plan.
Repossessing excess mining ground, he says, will prevent speculative tendencies by investors.
Mpofu says Zimplats was granted a special mining lease in 1994 that covered 25 years of mining activity, but new geological evidence suggests that, at the current rate of platinum extraction of one-million tons a year, it will take Zimbabwe over 400 years to exhaust the known reserves of the precious metal.
Mpofu says that, for a long time, the country has not realised significant value from the platinum industry, besides traditional statutory payments – hence, the need for local value addition.
“The Ministry has decided that, [two years from now], it will stop processing exports of semiprocessed platinum products,” he says, adding that platinum miners should set up a refinery in the country.
Mpofu says government has “awoken from its slumber and is now well aware of all the trickery” of mining companies and the prejudice it suffered in terms of potential revenue to the fiscus.
He says the country has benefited meaning- fully from diamond mining activities only in Chiadzwa, where, through the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, it is in partnership with most of the investors.
He states that the government benefited more from its diamond mining activities through joint ventures in Chiadzwa in six months than it benefited from the entire mining sector over the last ten years.