New Dawn signs MoU with Govt

Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment over the company’s indigenisation compliance proposal.
New Dawn’s Zimbabwe operating subsidiaries, Casmyn Mining Zimbabwe (Private) Limited, Falcon Gold Zimbabwe Limited and Olympus Mines Limited, are all foreign-owned companies.

The MoU, which was signed through the National Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board (NIEEB), establishes a broad-based framework for engagement with respect to the structuring and implementation of New Dawn’s proposed Indigenisation Plan. New Dawn has, however, maintained the confidentiality of the MoU.
In a recent indigenisation update, the gold producer said the signing of the MoU is a critical step in its development of an acceptable proposal.

“New Dawn believes that the signing of the MoU represents a significant step forward in the process of structuring and implementing an indigenisation plan that is acceptable to both the Government and the company’s key stakeholder groups,” said the company.
Earlier this year, the Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment dismissed the company’s submissions noting anomalies in the registration of its acquisitions of mines that were under the Central African Gold stable.

The company, however, denied the allegations.
New Dawn’s proposed indigenisation plan includes engaging directly with indigenous sources of capital in Zimbabwe. It is at the same time considering a secondary listing of its common shares on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange in order to provide a domestic platform for buying and selling New Dawn common shares by indigenous Zimbabweans.

Furthermore, the company has said it is considering establishing employee and community share ownership schemes for the benefit of indigenous Zimbabweans, as well as various other structures that would result in broad-based participation by the indigenous people.
New Dawn has also included in its discussions with the Government the concept of allocating equity to a sovereign wealth fund to reflect the sovereign ownership of minerals in the ground based on an appropriate valuation model.