Zim to reach seven million diamond carats in 2023
The country is well on course to reach seven million diamond carats thereby playing a significant role towards the achievement of the US$12 billion industry, Minister Winston Chitando has said.
Rudairo Mapuranga
According to the Minister of Mines and Mining Development, the country’s three active diamond producers are targeting to produce 7 million carats of diamonds in 2023 as the sector looks forward to the attainment of the US$1 billion annual revenue.
“The three active diamond producers are on course to reach seven million carats production by the end of 2023, and this will play a role in the attainment of the US$12 billion target from the increased production,” Minister Chitando said.
According to the diamond policy, only four companies are permitted to mine diamonds in Zimbabwe these are RioZim Murowa diamonds, Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC), Alrosa Zimbabwe and Anjin.
Only Alrosa Zimbabwe is currently not producing diamonds.
In 2021, Zimbabwe’s diamond production amounted to 4.2 million carats. This was an increase of around 55.5 per cent compared to the previous year. The country ranked eighth among the world’s largest diamond producers by volume.
The mining sector in Zimbabwe has grown by 100 per cent as the government envisions to see the country fetching US$12 billion from the sector by the end of this year.
Zimbabwe earned a total of US$5.4 billion in 2022 from the extractive industry which is a 100 per cent increase compared to the size of the sector before the second Republic in 2017.
The Mining industry also nearly doubled earnings in 2021 fetching US$5.2 billion with projections by the Ministry of Finance indicating that mining earnings will reach US$7.3 billion in the year 2022, achieving 60.8 per cent of the US$12 billion target for 2023.
The mining sector, which is expected to anchor short to medium-term growth, generates more than three-quarters of the country’s annual export earnings. Zimbabwe has over 60 commercially exploitable miners.
Key minerals mined in mineral-rich Zimbabwe, apart from diamonds, include platinum group metals (PGMs), nickel, chrome, gold, coal and lithium, among others.