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Minister Fred Moyo

Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter—
GOVERNMENT has signed an agreement with Japan for the exploration of minerals across the country and is ready to partner other players in this endeavour, Senate heard last week. Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Fred Moyo said Japan had partnered Government to explore a quarter of the country’s mining areas while other partners

were being sought to explore in the remaining area.

Deputy Minister Moyo said this while responding to a question from Mashonaland Central Senator Damien Mumvuri (Zanu-PF) who wanted to know what the Government was doing to explore minerals. Zimbabwe is rich in precious stones.

“A few months ago, we signed an exploration agreement with the Ministry of Mines in Japan which is called Jogmec.

They were already in other countries working on explorations in the SADC region using their headquarters which is in Botswana. They do what is called geo-physical work where a satellite is used to take pictures of our country and the pictures will be penetrating down 5 to 10km underground to see what is there. Thereafter, they will make a follow up with those drones taking other pictures. When we see that this is where there is a density of minerals, we will use helicopters with machines dangling close to the ground,” said Deputy Minister Moyo.

He said the exploration programmes were part of their five year plan.

“We want such things to be carried out in our five year plan which we are working with. If other countries enter agreements with us, we will come back and make a report on that so that you can see the development on the whole programme,” he said. Deputy Minister Moyo said they had also engaged China three years ago to do some mining survey work.

“We entered an agreement with China about three years ago to help us in that exploration throughout the country, to do what is called a geochemical survey. They look at all our land and see where there are minerals, then they exploit so that we know how much and what mineral is there. That work was being done for the past two or three years and we will be getting reports from them,” he said.

Deputy Minister Moyo said the Minerals Exploration Marketing Corporation Bill, if passed, would give impetus to the growth of the economy.

“When the Bill comes to Parliament, we will be looking at our policy on exploration, a policy which will facilitate which minerals we are supposed to mine first and exploring those minerals to what level so that we can exploit them to support the economy at the right level,” he said.