Stakeholders in the mining industry will focus on the value-addition road-map for diamond and platinum group metals (PGMs) at the 2021 Annual Mining Conference slated for next week Wednesday in Victoria Falls, 263Chat Business has learnt.
The two-day conference will be officially opened by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, in the company of the mines minister, Winston Chitando among other dignitaries.
Mining equipment suppliers, mining communities’ representatives and sector leaders will grace the event.
Notably, diamonds and PGMs- the local mining industry newbies alongside oil and gas will hog limelight at this year’s event as sector players seek to find ways to value add these minerals.
Already, other minerals mined locally are at various stages of beneficiation.
“We will have discussions around PGMs beneficiation and the idea is to discuss how Zimbabweans will unlock value and benefit from the country’s oil and gas potential as well as on beneficiation of PGMs,” Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe, president Elizabeth Nerwande told reporters this morning.
This year’s focus dovetails with government’s economic blueprint, the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), covering the period 2021 to 2025, and aims to drive the beneficiation of five key minerals during its five-year period in order to enhance socio-economic development.
The sector is poised to grow from a US$2,3 billion industry to a US$12 billion sector by 2023 buoyed by current exploration and production enhancement efforts.
The conference however comes amid a detrimental COVID-19 pandemic that has affected production capacity since last year.
Running under the theme, “Navigating turbulent Times, Sustaining Growth of Mining Industry in the Midst of Covid-19,” this year’s conference presents a platform for industry leaders to do some soul-searching on how to sustain the sector and mitigate harm already inflicted by the pandemic.
“2020 was not a good year and 2021 first quarter is still not a good period. The mining sector just like other sectors of the economy was not spared of the structural and systematic conditions that were brought by the covid-19 pandemic,” said Chamber of Mines of Zimbabwe, chief executive officer, Isaac Kwesu said.
“We had our own unique challenges, generally capital constraints, it’s still an issue in the industry and issues surrounding the operations costs which are still too high and they worsened the performance of the mining industry,” added Kwesu.
