Govt to craft gemstone marketing framework

THE Government says it has started work to develop a robust framework for the marketing of gemstones in the country amid concerns the country may be losing millions of US dollars through smuggling.

This comes as the Government earlier indicated it was working on crafting a gemstones development policy for semi-precious and coloured stones whose (unmined) value in the country is estimated at US$2 billion annually.

There have been reports of semi-precious stones being discovered in parts of the country such as Hurungwe and Karoi in Mashonaland West Province where villagers extracted the stones without going through the normal processes that ensure Zimbabwe benefits as a country.

Examples of semi-precious and coloured stones include amethyst, antimony, aventurine, beryl, talc, and aquamarine. The gemstones are largely used for jewellery manufacturing and decorative purposes.

In an interview last week, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development Mr Pfungwa Kunaka said: “A lot of stakeholders as we speak right now are concerned that we do not seem to have some robust framework, which is available to cater for the marketing of gemstones.

“The concerns go to the extent of suspecting that a lot of gemstones don’t have a regulated marketing arrangement, resulting in the country losing millions of dollars in potential revenue annually through smuggling.

“So, there has been some work which has been going on — the Government collaborating with other development partners to come up with some solutions to that issue.

“One of them was even looking at the training of our miners in the communities out there so that they are trained on how to mine and value the gemstones.”

Of late, it has been observed that after extraction, the gemstone miners were illegally selling the semi-precious or coloured stones to unscrupulous buyers, some of them from neighbouring countries such as Zambia and Mozambique in raw form.

At the inaugural Gemstones Conference held in Harare in 2022, Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando implored stakeholders in the mining industry to come up with recommendations for input into the gemstones development policy.

In light of the country being deprived of potential revenue from gemstones, Mr Kunaka said discussions have gone to the extent of introducing gemstone auctions where there will be a formal marketing arrangement for the semi-precious or coloured stones.

“Some of the players in the mining sector have come and suggested that we have a market arrangement where we have the auctioning of the gemstones.

“That idea if you look at a place like Karoi or Chinhoyi we could have some arrangements where on a given and appointed dates, the producers come and market and the buyers also come and they meet for the auctions.

“Indeed, there are discussions around the introduction of gemstones auctioning, but I could quickly indicate that these are still initial stages in the formulation of a framework, therefore I cannot say that we now have a timeframe in which to implement it,” he stated.

In 2019, the Government promulgated Statutory Instrument 256 of 2019 that regulates the mining of semi-precious stones across the value chain to benefit the local communities from which the resources are being extracted.

It is against this background that the Zimbabwe Miners Federation, which is the mother body of small-scale mining operators, initiated the formation of the National Gemstones Miners Association to which all other existing associations in the sub-sector would report.

The mining sector is a major economic distinct in Zimbabwe, accounting for over 75 percent of annual export receipts and contributing 16 percent to the gross domestic product.-hera;ld