Nelson Gahadza
Senior Business Reporter
Government has deployed 10 monitoring and surveillance teams across the country’s gold mining regions to inspect and ensure accountability for all the gold being produced in the areas to boost deliveries of the precious metal.
Mines and Mining Development Minister Zhemu Soda said at a gold mobilisation and deployment workshop on Monday in Harare that gold mobilisation continued to be one of the projects that the Government has identified to spearhead the growth of the mining sector and Zimbabwe’s economy in general.
Gold is Zimbabwe’s largest export earner while together with platinum, the minerals account for over 50 percent of exports from the mining sector.
Monitoring and evaluation are meant to curtail smuggling and illicit trafficking of gold, which entail organised criminal groups exploiting loopholes in national and international legislation as well as gaps in the trade monitoring procedures.
Precious metals such as gold are in most instances illegally transported in unrefined or semi-refined form across the globe to international refiners denying the country the full value and benefit from its otherwise finite natural resources.
“We are gathered here today to deploy 10 teams whose mandate would be to thoroughly inspect and ensure that all stakeholders account for all gold that has passed through their hands. The monitoring and surveillance exercise is meant to boost gold deliveries into the legal market and increase its accountability by stakeholders,” he said.
The minister added, “As we continue to improve the manner in which we conduct the exercise, the teams should continue with the innovative ways of inspecting plants at each stage of production across the whole value chain.”
Minister Soda said teams will be required to collect records on all hammer mills and mobile gold processing units, which have been introduced across most of the mining communities.
“This will help the MMMD (Ministry of Mines and Mining Development) to account for the gold that these illegal operators are producing with the hope of ensuring that this gold also finds its way to Fidelity Gold Refiners (FGR),” he said.
According to the minister, the 2023 Third Quarter Gold Mobilisation exercise will cover the country’s gold mining provinces of Masvingo, Matabeleland North, Mashonaland Central, Midlands, Manicaland, and Mashonaland West.
He said the mining sector is expected to play a pivotal role in the attainment of the country’s vision of being an upper middle-income economy by 2030, as enshrined in the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1) (2021–2025).
“President Mnangagwa has implored us to work hard towards achieving the vision of an upper middle-income economy by the year 2030. We can achieve that by ensuring a sustainable gold mining industry, given the value we can gain from this mineral,” said Minister Soda.
Gold has remained one of the major foreign currency earners in Zimbabwe, and the sector has proved to be strategic to the mining industry and the national economy at large.
In 2022, the gold deliveries to Fidelity Gold Refinery (FGR) stood at 35,2 metric tons, which was above the set target.
The 2023 gold deliveries to FGR set the target stand at 40 tonnes. Minister Soda said the key to realizing this target is the plugging of side markets, which are a pariah to efforts in the mining sector and to the development that we hope to see achieved.
In the period from January to August 2023, the gold deliveries to FGR stood at 19,335 metric tonnes, against a target of 40 metric tonnes by the end of the year.
In 2022, for the months of January to August, a total of 22,29 metric tonnes were delivered, representing a 13,2 percent decrease.
“Therefore, there is a need to employ strategies to decrease the rampant side marketing of gold,” said Minister Soda.
He noted that small-scale miners will continue to be the major gold producers, contributing over 60 percent every year from 2020, and the Ministry of Mines has employed a number of strategies to capacitate the small-scale miners to enhance their production.
Minister Soda said the strategies include the establishment of gold service centres, and the first site, which is in Makaha, Mashonaland East, is at an advanced stage with commissioning set for the end of October 2023.
“The commissioning of the other four gold service centres is set for December 2023,” he noted.
The Minister also indicated that the Mining Industry Loan Fund under the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development is also capacitating small-scale miners through the supply of equipment to improve their production standards and efficiency.
The Mines and Mining Development Ministry’s permanent secretary, Mr Pfungwa Kunaka, said the gold monitoring and surveillance exercise will take place from October 2–9, 2023, where 10 teams will be deployed to the country’s six mining provinces.
Mr Kunaka said one of the ministry’s strategic plans is to increase gold deliveries to FGR, including the gold mobilisation programme.
Gold mobilisation exercises by the Ministry and its stakeholders are carried out on a quarterly basis.
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