admin
company to embrace the Community Share Ownership Trust concept when it gave the local community 10 percent of the firm.
This landmark event officiated by President Mugabe will see the Chegutu, Mhondoro-Ngezi and Zvimba communities get 10 percent of the platinum mining company in line with the indigenisation laws.
The Community Share Ownership Trust is a new concept under which Zimbabweans also benefit from the extraction of mineral resources in their respective areas.
Twelve chiefs from the three districts bordering the Zimplats platinum mine appended their signatures to the agreement and received a US$10 million injection from the firm to kick-start the operations of the trust.
A deed of trust will be registered to give it legal standing.
Zimplats chairman Mr David Brown said the company planned a new expansion programme to raise output to 360 000 ounces a year by 2014. He said the handover of the 10 percent was the first tranche of the company’s indigenisation programme that would result in 51 percent local ownership of the mine.
President Mugabe assured Mr Brown that the indigenisation programme was not aimed at expropriating foreign-owned companies but empowering locals who by right owned the natural resources being extracted.
The President urged Zimplats to seriously consider building a refinery in Zimbabwe.
“Mr Brown, go and tell your shareholders that we don’t intend to take over (Zimplats). We don’t want to steal or rob that which does not belong to us, but we don’t want to be robbed as well,” said the President.
Analysts have said the present platinum production did not warrant the construction of a refinery as the combined annual output of the three platinum mines – Zimplats, Mimosa and Unki – was below 500 000 ounces which did not justify such a massive investment.
Instead, said Mr Brown, Zimplats had offered technical assistance to help the Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation utilise a platinum claim valued at US$153 million which he said had not been utilised.
“In 2006, Zimplats released ground with 36 million ounces worth of resource. We note, however, that there’s no production on those claims,” he said.
The exploitation of this claim would no doubt boost production and make a stronger case for the refinery investment.
Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere said the community trusts were one of the vehicles being used for the broad-based economic empowerment initiative.
Others are workers’ share option trusts while a sovereign wealth fund would be set up to enable ordinary Zimbabweans to buy shares in the foreign-owned companies, offering locals shareholding in compliance with the Indigenisation Act.
Minister Kasukuwere said community share trusts in other parts of the country would soon be launched once the companies finalised agreements with the respective community leaders.
But he stressed that the objective of the trusts was to benefit communities, and not individuals.
Online Reporter