Implats has an 87 percent shareholding in Zimplats – the country’s top producer and mining investor – and is one of the mines being targeted by President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) to relinquish at least 51 percent shares to black Zimbabweans by the end of this month.
In July, Youth and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere rejected the company’s indigenisation plan, along with those of 174 other companies and Kasukuwere wrote to Zimplats last month giving the miner 14 days to come up with a revised economic empowerment programme.
"Negotiations (are) ongoing," Implats' spokesman Bob Gilmour told the media yesterday.
Last week diamond producer Murowa, a unit of Rio Tinto, said the government had accepted part of its empowerment plans where it intended to incorporate local communities in its operations.
The empowerment drive is being spearheaded by Zanu (PF) while Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC party has warned that the programme could see the economy sliding back into recession.
Foreign investors are nervous, with bitter memories of Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned commercial farms that plunged commercial agriculture still lingering.
The Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, which Mugabe signed in 2008 when his ZANU-PF had a parliamentary majority, has divided the government and Economic Planning Minister Tapiwa Mashakada told an industry conference in Australia last week that the law was "flexible" and did not aim to seize or nationalise assets.
Implats chief executive David Brown has previously said it wants to retain full control of Zimplats and was confident it would not eventually have to surrender 51 percent shares to locals.
Post published in: Business