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Acting Business Editor
THE Bulawayo Miners’ Association (BMA) has cancelled its application for a gold-buying permit following an announcement by Government that all small-scale miners must sell their output through Fidelity Printers and Refiners.Presenting the 2014 national budget last month, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa proposed that effective from January 1, 2014 all small-scale miners must sell their output through Fidelity Printers.
BMA advisor Ishmael Kaguru told Business Chronicle last week that the announcement automatically meant that they were no longer pursuing their application.
“All gold buying licences have been cancelled. This follows the announcement by Minister Chinamasa that all small-scale miners effective from January 1 must sell their gold through Fidelity Printers.
“The announcement also meant that all the existing gold buying licences expired on December 31, 2013,” he said.
Kaguru said Minister Chinamasa has highlighted a number of measures meant to boost output by small-scale miners.
“We are also happy that the minister announced a raft of measures meant to boost small-scale mining activities. For example, he announced that royalty on gold will be reduced from 9 percent to 3 percent with effect from January 1.
“In addition we are also more than happy following the setting aside of $100 million for small-scale miners. That is a very big development and if such funding is disbursed it will go a long way in boosting our operations as small-scale miners.”
In this year’s national budget, the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development availed the $100 million financial incentives for small-scale miners after realising that they were failing to access concessionary finance from banks due to lack of collateral.
Kaguru said Zimbabwe could surpass the 15 tonnes of gold projected by Government this year to about 20 tonnes on the back of financial incentives small-scale miners will receive.
In the past few years, output by small-scale miners plummeted due to a host of challenges among them, lack of working capital to buy basic mining equipment such as compressors and jack hammers.
In 2012, small-scale miners delivered about two tonnes of the 14,7 tonnes Zimbabwe produced. At its peak in 2006, the country produced 29 tonnes of gold with 60 percent of the output coming from the small-scale miners.
Online Reporter