New use it or lose it mining law coming

The MDC-M leader last week told Parliament that the new Mines and Minerals Bill seeks to compel mining firms some that have for years been sitting on unexploited claims covering vast tracts to mine such claims with those that fail to do so risking losing them.

Mutambara, who was responding to a question by Buhera North legislator William Mutomba about what action the government was taking to ensure firms exploit claims they hold, said the Cabinet committee on legislation was finalising work on the Mines and Minerals Bill as well as a Diamond Bill to regulate the diamond industry. Those claims that people have (and are not exploiting), we must apply a use it or lose it’ principle, Mutambara said.

The DPM said the government was also looking to undertake an exercise to evaluate Zimbabwes vast deposits of diamond, coal, platinum, gold and other key minerals that remain untapped and unmeasured to ensure the state extracts maximum value for the resources when licensing private investors to mine them. “What is the value of the platinum that is in the Great Dyke, the diamond in Marange, the coal in Hwange that is not mined, meaning the asset underground must be understood as an asset with value.

Which means before you get that claim, the state of Zimbabwe will say we the people of Zimbabwe are bringing this asset to the table and this asset is worth half a billion dollars. You as an investor, what are you bringing to the table?” Mutambara said. Zimbabwe boasts some of the richest mineral deposits in Africa, with 60 percent of the countrys total land area believed to be holding deposits of one valuable mineral or another, according to the governments Department of Mines.

The department says more than 80 percent of all known deposits are under private claim but only five percent of registered claims were being exploited, prompting the government to consider new legislation to force firms to mine their claims. Zimbabwe has the second largest platinum deposits in the world after South Africa as well as abundant reserves of gold, platinum, coal, diamonds, nickel, iron ore, copper, coal-bed methane that remain largely untapped.