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Minister Chidhakwa

Obert Chifamba Eastern Edition Bureau
Individuals or private companies that want to be involved in the country’s diamond operations can now only do so through value addition processes like cutting and polishing, and not through exploration or the actual extraction, Mines and Mining Development Minister Walter Chidhakwa, has said. Minister Chidhakwa said in an interview yesterday that individuals or companies would cut and polish material sourced from Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company (ZCDC), as a way of plugging loopholes that have been used to deprive the country of revenue in the past.

Government stopped all private firms that were extracting diamonds in the Marange diamond fields because they were not declaring correct figures.

It then formed ZCDC, which has been tasked to properly extract the gems and account for every revenue from the venture.

“Government is now working on a law that will legally entrench ZCDC’s monopoly on diamond mining in the country,” said Minister Chidhakwa.

“In fact, there will soon be an Act of Parliament that will make sure that diamond mining remains a preserve of Government.

“We are in the process of registering all diamond concessions across the country as we speak. Our concentration is on building ZCDC around conglomerates in Marange and Chimanimani. We have since secured equipment that is on its way for the mining programmes.”

Minister Chidhakwa said ZCDC would do the exploration and mining of the precious mineral, while for marketing they would rope in the Minerals Marketing Corporation of Zimbabwe (MMCZ).

He said Government had also secured $80 million from the Ministry of Finance through the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) for the securing of equipment to use in the mining operations.

Asked if there were chances for some of the companies that were evicted from Marange to come back and partner Government in diamond mining, Minister Chidhakwa said the sector was now only a preserve of Government.

“No groups, whether local or foreign will be allowed to do diamond mining,” he said.

“It is now the State only that is allowed to do so and make sure all the revenue is put to good use for the benefit of the economy.”

Minister Chidhakwa dismissed claims that ZCDC was not producing enough to match the companies that were evicted from Marange as baseless.

“When ZCDC took over all the companies that were evicted, two of them took Government to court fighting the eviction and for 12 months we could not do any operations,” he said.

“We only started operations after the companies lost the case, so judging our performance against those companies is very unfair.

“We will need time to stabilise our ship before we can start talking of such comparisons. The good thing is that we now have access to all mining areas that were previously controlled by individuals or private companies, so we are now getting down to business in earnest; mark my words.”

The country boasts other vast diamond deposits awaiting exploration in areas such as Nyanyadzi, Bikita, Mwenezi and Beitbridge.