Online Reporter
Zvamaida Murwira
Senior Reporter
ZIMBABWE has engaged experts on gas and oil extraction to assist in crafting legislation and mutually beneficial agreements that will ensure the country derives optimum returns from its endowment in Muzarabani, legislators have heard.
Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister responsible for Oil and Gas Research and Other Strategic Minerals, Engineer Caleb Makwiranzou, told the National Assembly during a Question and Answer Session on Wednesday that staffers from the ministry were in Victoria Falls exchanging notes with the experts.
He was responding to questions from Zaka South legislator, Cde Clemence Chiduwa, who wanted an update on gas and oil exploration in Muzarabani and Lupane and whether they had experts to structure petroleum agreements.
“Indeed, oil and gas are new to us. We have been talking to experts. In particular, we have been talking to a group which is called the African Legal Support Facility (ALSF),” he said.
“ALSF has a model which we call PEDPA, which means Petroleum Exploration Development and Production Agreement. It is a model. They also have a petroleum toolkit.
“As I speak, some of our directors are actually in Victoria Falls learning how best we can do the agreements. In fact, the first thing will be the legislation, because it is new to us.”
After the crafting of legislation, Deputy Minister Makwiranzou said they will then move to petroleum mining agreements and finally, “how we go about tendering, fair tender procedures so that Zimbabwe is not taken advantage of”.
He said they have drilled two boreholes in Muzarabani called Mukuyu 1 and 2 and they now have samples showing evidence of the presence of hydrocarbons in Muzarabani.
“The Honourable Member will know that mining consists of basically five issues.
“The first one is that we have to explore. We have done the exploration.
“The second one is that we have to discover, and we have discovered that there is oil and gas in Muzarabani. What we now need to do is, we need to have a contract with the person who wants to invest in Muzarabani. This contract is called Petroleum Production Share Agreement (PPSA),” said Deputy Minister Makwiranzou.
Presently, Government is negotiating with Geo Associates and Invictus Energy, who are in Muzarabani to try and agree on the terms of their exploitation of the mineral.
“This will ensure that there is transparency and that there is a legal and physical framework and that indeed, there is fair value sharing.
“This is what is now happening in Muzarabani,” he said.
Responding to another question, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Deputy Minister Kudakwashe Mnangagwa said the country was on course to achieve national objectives of Vision 2030.
“When we talk of Vision 2030, it is a journey that we are travelling up to 2030. The Honourable Member said we started in 2018, 2019 and 2020. We had TSP, which was the Transitional Stabilisation Plan and mainly focused on good expenditure. From 2021 to 2025, we are in National Development Strategy 1, which looks at Vision 2030. That has three programmes, TSP and NDS1, which is coming to an end and National Development Strategy 2, which will start in 2026 to 2030.
“According to the vision of the President, we are focusing on getting there and we expect to get there and achieve it successfully,” said Deputy Minister Mnangagwa.
He said attainment of an upper-middle-income society entailed both quantitative and qualitative factors.
“You find that from a Whole-of-Government approach in reaching this upper-middle-income status, we make sure that there is a redistributive effect. Henceforth, when we come to Parliament with a tax policy, you will find that a lot of these are aimed at redistributing mostly from the haves to the have-nots, increasing our social safety nets just to make sure that we close that gap.
“In addition, we as well give incentives in areas where we believe investors, both Zimbabweans and foreigners, would want to come in to create new industries and new jobs,” he said.
“These are areas that maybe, we will have a bit of laxity when it comes to taxing. I would say in general, looking at our five-year national strategy, which is now going into the second five years, we are on track in terms of employment creation, economic development and various other aspects of our 14 pillars.”
