Ministry targets to boost gold deliveries

The Ministry of Mines and Mining Development will next week embark on gold mobilisation exercises as a way to step up efforts to boost gold deliveries to Fidelity Printers and Refineries (FPR) and achieve US$12 billion target by 2023 in line with vision 2030.

The targeted provinces are Midlands, Mashonaland West and Matabeleland South. The mobilisation team will educate miners on the environmental regulations, mining policies and practices and records keeping.

The taskforce will ensure that the Government set target of 60 tonnes gold deliveries to FPR is met compared to 32 tonnes last year.

The national taskforce is a collaborative effort that involves the country’s security apparatus and the Ministry of Mines and its primary mandate is to make sure that all gold produced in the country is delivered to FPR.

The ministry is, however, still confident that this year’s target is attainable and is stepping up efforts to make sure all locally-produced gold is directed to the formal market.

In an interview on the sidelines of Gold Mobilisation workshop held in Harare, Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando was confident that the mining sector will achieve US$12 billion output by next year.

He said the taskforce will also solicit for stakeholder input on how to ramp up gold production as well solicit for strategies that dissuade leakages.

We have a $12 billion target, we a gold mobilisation programme in which a number of Government departments are going through three provinces meeting the mining fraternity to look at the enablers and the challenges that they may have, but our main goal is to maximise gold deliveries to Fidelity Printers.

“We had good deliveries in the first three months this year and we want to ensure that we have a huge increase in the national deliveries in the year 2022.”

Chamber of Mines Zimbabwe chief executive Isaac Kwesu also said the mobilisation team will visit gold producing mines to ascertain mine output.

Statistics from the Reserve bank of Zimbabwe shows that Gold deliveries to Fidelity Printers and Refiners jumped by 55,5 percent to 29,6 tonnes in 2021.-The Herald