Zimbabwe produces 2,2 million diamond carats in 3 months

The pre-budget seminar for parliamentarians entered its second day with government revealing that over 2,2 million carats of diamonds were produced by the end of the third quarter.

3,36 million carats are expected to be produced by the end of the year, reflecting a 30 percent drop in production.

In 2014, 4,773 million carats of diamonds were produced in Zimbabwe.

Production has however dropped by 30 percent as mining companies are scaling down after cashing in on alluvial diamonds.

Government has therefore decided to move on to consolidate all the companies and regulatory issues have been renewed to ensure that similar incidents do not occur.

"We have discovered that the licences of all the mines in Marange today expired and they were not renewed and they did not pay their amounts over the years and so if somebody does not pay their fees and renew their licence, I do not believe that they should continue mining," said Mining Minister Walter Chidhakwa.

Production in other minerals including coal, chrome and platinum also decreased due to a number of reasons which include power cuts, obsolete machinery and lack of capital.

However, gold production is expected to increase by 22 percent by the end of the year.

A total of US$4 billion is required to revamp the mining sector over the next four years.