Cabinet on Tuesday approved the unbundling of state mining arm – the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) into four mineral specific units as efforts to improve efficiency in State owned assets gather pace.
There had been concerns that the previous order was too bloated for one organisation and thus limiting the mining vehicle to effectively exert itself in the mining sector.
The mining sector has been identified as a key pillar towards the attainment of Vision 2030 as enunciated by President Mnangagwa by which Zimbabwe should be an upper middle income earning economy.
For this to be achieved, Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando, has said the mining sector should generate annual export earnings of US$12 billion by 2023 up from just over US$2 billion achieved in 2018. Speaking to journalists at Tuesday’s post-Cabinet meeting media briefing, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Monica Mutsvangwa, said Government had resolved to unbundle the state entity into four mineral specific units.
The state mining entity is a major player in the mining sector and has interests ranging from diamond mining, gold mining, emerald mining, platinum mining, copper mining, tin mining and several other precious stones. The state mining vehicle has huge targets among them growing its diamond production at its subsidiary, Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC), from 2, 8 million carats mined out last year to at least 10 million carats annually by 2025.
The diamond miner has already planned to invest US$32 million in exploration projects to support a resource definition and expansion programme towards the 2025 target.
Government has also set ZMDC high targets in gold productions where it is expected to play a significant role towards the national output target of 100 tonnes per year by 2023 up from 33, 2 tonnes delivered to Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) in 2018.
Business Times
