The Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ) has
declined to renew a chrome export permit for leading chrome producer — African
Chrome Fields (ACF) — after unearthing serious irregularities in the way the
company was conducting business which bordered on looting, The Sunday Mail
Business can reveal.
ACF is a joint venture between Sakunda Holdings and
Johannesburg-based sub-Saharan conglomerate — Moti group — which has interests
that straddle across mining, aviation, property development and transport.
The Moti group last year switched on an Aluminothermic
Chrome processing Plant near Kwekwe and also signed a deal which would have
seen the concern absorbing chrome produce by small-scale miners through a
vehicle called the Zimbabwe Motivational Mining (ZMM).
However, over the last few days, the group’s senior
executives have been quoted in some sections of the South African media as well
as locally denouncing the new dispensation and Zimbabwe as an unattractive
investment destination.
The group also announced that it was retrenching about 500
workers in a move that signals the beginning of the firm’s withdrawal from
Zimbabwe.
Investigations by The Sunday Mail Business have, however,
shown that contrary to the group’s assertion that the Zimbabwean unit was
negatively affecting its overall performance, reality is that it was the local
authorities that had pulled the plug.
In an interview on Friday, exclusive state minerals
marketing arm, MMCZ, said it was “correcting the mess” surrounding ACF to
ensure that the company doesn’t continue to “milk” the country of its
resources.
“That’s correct,” said Mr Muzenda when asked if the
marketer is handling a case involving suspected ill-practice by ACF.
“MMCZ is correcting the mess and the Moti group thinks we
are being unreasonable. They have been milking the country and we cannot
continue to allow nonsense like that, because if you do the numbers you will
realise that the country has been subsidising their operations.
“They (ACF) claimed that they had a ferry chrome plant in
South Africa for further processing the ore (but) we do not believe they have.
“What is really unacceptable is that they were exporting
chrome ore, alluvial and stuff for onward beneficiation in South Africa but we
are of the view that they were not beneficiating, they were just exporting and
the country was getting nothing.
“The other unfortunate part is that somewhere along the
way, someone, I really don’t know what they were thinking, gave them national
project status and why they got it I just don’t know but we will sort it out,” he
said.
Efforts to get a comment from ACF and the Ministry of Mines
and Mining Development were unsuccessful by the time of going to print but the
Ministry is on record saying it was pushing for chrome beneficiation as a means
to boost revenue and creating jobs through smelters.
In an interview in June, Mines and Mining Development
Deputy Minister Polite Kambamura said Government had gotten assurance from the
private sector that they will accelerate beneficiation and in turn had decided
to park a beneficiation penalty.
“. . . we had introduced a two percent beneficiation
penalty tax for all the chrome that was being exported as concentrates or lumpy
but the miners came to us and asked that we suspend the penalty,” the Deputy
Minister told the Sunday Mail in June. Sunday Mail
0 comments:
Post a Comment