eBusiness Weekly
Achieves last year’s production in seven month
To commission new plant next month
Martin Kadzere
Zimbabwe has produced about 1,72 million diamond carats (345kg)since the beginning of the year, reflecting little change in production in the same period last year, chief executive of the state-owned Zimbabwe Consolidated Diamond Company, Morris Mpofu said.“By end of the month, we are reaching production of last year of 1,76 million carats. This puts us on course of meeting this year’s target of three million carats,” Mr Mpofu said.
The ZCDC was formed in March 2016 after the government evicted all diamond mining firms in the Marange fields in Eastern Zimbabwe saying their licenses had expired.
Some of the companies affected include Mbada Diamonds, Anjin Investments, Marange Resources, Diamond Mining Company, Jinan, RERA, Kusena and Gye-Nyame.
Zimbabwe is currently stockpiling all the diamonds from Chiadzwa after the High Court barred the ZCDC from selling the diamonds mined from Mbada concessions.
Mr Mpofu said ZCDC will start commissioning the new plant next month and ramp up monthly production from 200 000 carats to 300 000 tonnes.
“We are also looking at investing more in exploration at our current concessions and later new areas,” Mr Mpofu said.
He said the company was awaiting for approvals for Environmental Impact Assessment from the Environmental Management Agency to explore the Chihota area.
The Government is in the process of coming up with a new diamond policy, which will lead to the unbundling of the ZCDC to ensure more players are involved in the sector.
The new legislation would be promulgated to also ensure communities proximity to the diamond fields benefit from the resource by imposing a legal requirement for meaningful corporate social responsibility programmes.
Government wants to ensure that people in surrounding communities benefit from the finite resources in their communities.
