Coal production set to decline

Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines president Mr Winston Chitando said production bottlenecks continued to inhibit increase in output.

“Coal output for 2012 is set to decline from 2 562 054 tonnes achieved in 2011 to 2 500 000 tonnes,” he said.

Mr Chitando said erratic power supplies, cash constraints and old machinery continued to weigh down operations.

The Chamber of Mines estimates that the country’s coal mining industry requires $280 million to recapitalise in five years since 2010.

To date no significant capital has been ploughed into the mining sector due to various challenges.

Zimbabwe has two firms mining coal namely Hwange Colliery Company, which is the biggest, and Makomo Resources with the third, Liberation Mining, still exploring.

Last year the government issued 20 special coal grants but most of the projects are still to take off.

At peak production in the mid 1990s the country produced over five million tonnes of coal but since the turn of the millennium annual output has been hovering between two and three million tonnes.

Coal has been the dominant energy mineral for Zimbabwe over the years.—New Ziana.