Consolidate gains in Gold Sector

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One of the biggest reforms in getting almost all gold accounted for was the return to using the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's Fidelity Printers as the sole legal buyer, so ensuring that there was no cheating.

But at the same time Fidelity ensured that all producers were paid the full price promptly and that Fidelity had buying points in all gold producing areas. It sounds a simple reform, but it has taken time for us to get there.

Zimbabwe has been producing gold for centuries, but most of the gold is in very small deposits that have to be worked by small-scale miners or not at all. The few modest deposits, usually these days of lower grade ores, continue to be exploited, but the production by the larger producers is slowly drifting down. This is likely to continue unless new larger deposits are found.

So we need to continue to look for ways to help small companies and even families mine gold better and more efficiently. The Government has in recent years found ways to support such mining and now the RBZ has set up a US$50 million facility to give more support and more people more opportunities.

Decriminalising gold panning was another advance. The ban never worked and it was difficult for panners to sell gold legally. Now that panning is now no longer a crime, and now that Fidelity have set up shop in panning areas, a lot of problems have been sorted out.

Remaining problems are the environment and safety. It is fairly easy to ensure that a large scale producer does not make much mess to start with and cleans up dumps and the like properly.

It is also easy to police safety standards on large mines and in any cases big mining companies usually have access to the information and skills required to implement proper safety measures.

But it is harder to police all small-scale producers and panning can be a serious problem. But we need to try. Several ideas have been floated to minimise the environmental damage from panning and improve safety.

We need to now implement these. Spreading wealth from mining is helpful to relieving rural poverty and opening more opportunities to earning a decent living, but we must not pay the price for this in blood.

But generally we are back onto the right track in gold mining, with the country likely to earn almost US$600 million this year from exports.

We must now reinforce our successes, which the Government and RBZ are doing and minimise the problems.