The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
SMALL-SCALE miners are calling on the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe to remodel its Gold Development Facility to enable it to benefit more players so as to enhance production of the yellow metal.
Zimbabwe Miners’ Federation (ZMF) first vice- president Mr Ishmael Kaguru said the $74 million Gold Development Facility which was disbursed by RBZ’s arm Fidelity Printers and Refineries played a significant part in increasing gold output by small-scale miners last year but hinted that production would have bettered had the funding been all encompassing.
“There are many miners that failed to access funding under the facility mostly due to lack of collateral. About 300 small-scale miners benefited and that’s about one percent of the 30 000 registered small-scale miners and of those that benefited most of them are township dwellers while most of the miners are based in remote areas and hardly have title deeds for their immovable properties.
“Of course, the facility played a significant role in ensuring that we surpass our set (gold delivery) target for last year but we feel if it was all encompassing we could even have doubled the output. We need a facility which doesn’t have stringent conditions. The issue of collateral has to be scrapped and beneficiaries should be considered on the quantities of gold they deliver to the Fidelity Printers and Refineries,” said Mr Kaguru.
Last year, gold producers fell short of producing the Government’s set target of 27 tonnes only managing 24,8 tonnes, with small-scale miners however, surpassing their target of 12 tonnes by delivering 13 176 tonnes to the country’s sole buyer of the yellow metal, Fidelity Printers and Refiners compared to the big miners who only managed 11 667 tonnes.
Small-scale miners have set a target of producing 18 tonnes of gold this year.
“We have engaged RBZ’s Gold Mobilisation Technical Committee with regards to the scrapping of collateral demands in accessing the Gold Development Facility and it promised to look into the issue with a view of taking our demands into considerations,” said Mr Kaguru.
The Gold Development Facility has since been increased to $150 million this year buoyed by the performance of small-scale miners last year.
Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando said Government was working on various support measures aimed at assisting small-scale miners to improve production.
“We are looking at the whole programme to increase production from small scale miners . . . part of it involves working with gold centres which are being established and what that will do is that gold centres will enable once they are capacitated, to assist with working capital for some of those who are part of the delivering scheme to that gold centre but it will be a whole menu of measures the Government will be looking at,” said Minister Chitando.-@DNsingo
