Cabinet approves raft of incentives towards value addition of gold

THE MINISTER OF MINES AND MINING DEVELOPMENT Walter Chidhakwa has said Zimbabwe cabinet has approved a raft of incentives that are targeted towards value addition of local gold and diamonds into finished commodities for the markets.

Speaking in parliament Chidhakwa said, "Let me say that in as far as gold is concerned, we beneficiate our gold up to about 95.6% purity into gold bars that are then exported out of Zimbabwe. What is critical for us is to say, when we have got the refined gold, what can we do with it? I spent some time just looking at the jewellery that is made out of gold and the majority of it, African gold, when you go to Belgium. The jewellery that is made is amazing and what we have done now is that, we have presented to Cabinet and Cabinet has approved a raft of incentives that are targeted towards value addition of our gold and diamonds into finished commodities for the markets."

He said these incentives relate to the provision of knowledge because what is critical when you are going to do that, the gold you have, but what is critical is in fact, the knowledge to be able to make such jewellery out of the mineral that we have.

"This is something that we are very keen to do and we hope that it can succeed. I also want to just say that on the platinum side, you know that at the beginning of 2015, we had imposed a 15% tax on the export of non-beneficiated platinum, meaning the concentrate," he said.

"We insisted that we wanted our platinum to be exported as platinum matte and subsequently as refined platinum. We went into a discussion with the companies; first and foremost, let me say that Zimplats has got capacity to beneficiate, meaning that it has got the furnaces to create the platinum matte."

Chidhakwa said therefore, this 15% was not going to affect them. It was going to affect primarily, Unki and Mimosa. We went into discussions with them; they have now agreed that by 2016, they will have setup their own smelters particularly in the case of Unki; who have now announced and it is contained in their financial statements that they will in fact establish their own smelter.

"Let me just say something about our chrome. You know that we have beneficiated our chrome mostly from raw chrome to high carbon ferrochrome to low carbon ferrochrome and ferro silicon chrome," said Chidhakwa. "We export it in that form, we have got about 12 smelting companies in Zimbabwe. As we were introducing the export of raw chrome out of the country, we also gave a condition to the smelting companies that they will not be able to export raw chrome unless they fulfill their production capacity in the smelters."

He said they continue to insist that the companies must first and foremost, fulfill their smelting capacity then they will be allowed to export raw chrome.

"Basically, that is what we have been doing on the value addition of our minerals," he said.

"You cannot beneficiate or value unless you have the skills. We have started a programme to establish, at the school of mines, an additional programme for beneficiation and value addition. This is specifically for diamonds. We have agreed with an international company which itself is doing value addition of diamonds, gold and other minerals into the international markets," Chidhakwa said.