Former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel once promised to introduce a flow-through scheme to incentivise mineral exploration but instead gazetted a scheme that finance boutiques seemed to like.
Not a single mining company took it up. Many efforts were made to communicate that other countries had perfected exploration incentivisation and that there was no need for Treasury to try and reinvent the wheel. But getting through to Treasury proved impossible. Treasury must now be instructed by those able to do so to go about exploration incentivisation in the right way.
Treasury must be made to acknowledge that without mining’s massive recent tax contribution, it would have been up the creek without a paddle. It must also be made to realise that without exploration, mining will cease to exist, and if mining ceases to exist, there will be no economic bail-out next time the South African economy runs aground.