Govt unveils US$10 m gold facility
Government yesterday launched US$10 mln gold facility to stimulate production of the yellow metal by small scale miners in the country.
Gold is Zimbabwe’s top foreign currency earner with the small-scale mining industry accounting for the largest bullion produced in the country.
Addressing journalists in Harare to officially launch the facility, Finance and Economic Development Minister Professor Mthuli Ncube said: “We are gathered here today to launch the US$10 mln gold facility which is broken down as follows: US$5 m is targeted for the Artisanal Gold Small-scale Miners Fund AGSMF, another US$5 m targeted at the gold service centres recovery facility — there is a split there but all going to the same clients, to the small-scale gold miners but through separate channels.”
The fund, which will be administered by BancABC is supported through the Special Drawing Rights funds the country received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 2021.
The IMF allocated Zimbabwe US$956 M equivalent of SDRs as part of a general allocation of US$650 B that was released globally to all of the multilateral institution’s member countries.
“It is from these resources that Treasury is targeting strategic sectors such as mining expansion and value addition, the mining sector has the potential to generate even more in terms of foreign currency earning.
“It’s already the largest foreign currency earner but can do more and to create more jobs that have a multiplier effect in growing our economy,” said Prof Ncube. “The gold facility has the potential to close the funding gap and spearhead increased productivity as well as finance bankable projects with a focus on value addition.
“Such strategic deployment of resources will ensure that Zimbabwe’s Vision 2030 remains on course as we target a knowledge-driven and industrializing upper middle-income society by 2030.” According to our official statistics, the country’s total exports increased from US$889,1 M in 2008 to US$5,1 B by 2021.The exports grew by an average growth rate of 39,1 percent per annum for the period 2008 to 2021.
“Zimbabwe’s top mineral export increased from US$1,2 B in 2020 to US$1,7 B in 2021. The 42 percent increase in 2021 is due to increased gold output and firm prices as global economies recovered from the Covid-19 lockdowns.
“In support of value addition and beneficiation programme for the small-scale miners, Government
“In 2018, the Second Republic under the leadership of His Excellency Cde Mnangagwa came up with a model gold centre in Bubi, Matabeleland South and the whole idea was to try and use that as a pilot project for the roll-out of gold centres.
“The whole idea of the gold centre is to provide centralised processing facilities and also to provide specialised services to those who feed into the gold centre and also provide the required transport to the centres for the ores to be processed,” he said.
In 2019, the Government announced that more gold centres would be rolled out across all the gold mining regions in the country to boost output.
“The second intervention is to increase the amount of money available to apply as loans to the small and artisanal mining sector and that’s the facility which will be administered by the Mining Industry Loan Fund. “One of the ministry’s deliverables under the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS 1) is the establishment of gold centres and this helps significantly towards the mining moving towards attainment of that target.
Six gold centres would be established of which five of them, it has been firmed up will be at Makaha, Penhalonga, Mazoe, Mt Darwin and at a site to be finalized which will be in the Midlands province,” said Minister Chitando.”-ebusinessweekly
