BREAKING: RBZ addresses late gold payments
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Dr. J.P Mangudya has committed to settle the outstanding payments of gold submissions beginning next week.
This was after he met with the Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) officials as they voiced their concern over the late payments. Gold miners are going for weeks without payment after submitting their yellow metal prompting others to halt operations or turn to the parallel market.
ZMF President Ms. Henrietta Rushwaya said the governor apologised and has committed to begin settling the owed amounts.
“We just came out of a meeting with the RBZ Governor and he has apologised and committed that outstanding FPR Bullion Payments will be done starting next week. Any inconvenience that has arisen out of this is sincerely regretted”.
“Let us continue sending our Bullion to Fidelity and if we experience payment challenges thereafter, kindly feel free to raise the alarm through our ZMF Secretariat for engagement with FPR/ RBZ”. she continued.
Rushwaya apologised for the inconveniences caused by the late payments saying, “Once again as ZMF we sincerely apologise and regret the suffering the payment problems have caused in the past 2 weeks. We are really sorry,” she concluded.
Gold miners for the past weeks have not been paid after submitting their bullion to the country’s sole gold buyer Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR). This has heightened the chances of the yellow metal being channelled to the ever liquid parallel market.
Recently FPR General Manager attributed the shortage of foreign currency at FPR to the Covid-19 pandemic which has seen international flights restricted hindering the consistent transportation of hard cash.
The government has been hailed for hiking gold buying rates which are currently the most attractive on the local market. However, liquidity challenges will see miners shunning the otherwise brilliant move.