Gold deliveries up 88%
Gold deliveries to the country’s sole buyer and marketer, Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) rose 88% to 10.176 tonnes in the first four months of this year from 5.4 tonnes delivered during the same period last year
lured by high commodity prices.
FPR acting general manager, Peter Magaramombe, said the company was engaging the authorities with the view to
deal with high taxes, low retention levels and investment to ramp up production.
“The gold deliveries have reached 10.176 tonnes by the end of April from 5.44 tonnes during the same period while the gold deliveries for the month have jumped 79% to 2.481 tonnes in April this year from 1.384 tonnes delivered during the same period last year, ” Magaramombe said.
He said Zimbabwe should capitalise on good international gold prices to ramp up production.
“There is a huge need to ramp up production following the firm commodity prices on the international market,
” Magaramombe said.
Of the 10.176 tonnes delivered during the reviewed period, small scale miners delivered 6.571 tonnes against big mining houses’ 3.605 tonnes.
With pricing firming due to Russia-Ukraine war and global inflation, large scale miners expected to get large export revenues thereby ramping up production.
Experts project large scale miners to give small scale miners a run for their money following good global gold prices.
The Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe CEO, Isaac Kwesu, said various miners were riding on the current strong mineral prices hence strong investments are needed.
“Miners should capitalise on firm prices to ramp up production in order to get significant export revenue that can
be reinvested into the mining houses operations, ” Kwesu said.
He said there was still a long way to go to achieve an average of 8.3 tonnes per month to reach 100 tonnes a year, although the output was fairly good.
Zimbabwe’s gold export receipts went up 42% to US$1.7bn during 2021 from US$1.2bn earned during 2020 due to improved gold output and firm prices.
Gold deliveries to FPR soared 55% to record 29.6 tonnes in 2021 from 19.05 in 2020 on the back of timeous payments and incentives given to yellow metal producers.