eBusiness Weekly
HARARE – The Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation (ZMDC) received over 150 bids for its struggling mining companies that it put on tender at the beginning of the year, a cabinet Minister has said.
In February, ZMDC, a government firm, which owns an empire in the mining sector, put up its struggling or closed companies that it seeks to revive up for grabs to interested investors.
The company owns massive resources that have not been fully exploited due to low investment while some of its subsidiaries have in the past struggled and shut down as a result of viability and governance issues.
The companies put up for grabs are involved in the mining of gold, emerald, lithium and tantalite.
ZMDC is also aiming for a partnership in a coal bed methane production project.
Mines and Mining Development Minister, Winston Chitando told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Mines that the ZMDC had since done due diligence on the firms that submitted bids.
“There are six assets which were put on tender and the response was just overwhelming. There were 151 respondents to that,” he said.
“The volume was much more than anticipated but the board has gone through all the due diligences and other processes within government and the chairman has assured me that in the next two weeks they will be convening to announce the successful tenders.”
Chitando said the recently appointed ZMDC board, chaired by Peter Chimboza, had also committed to putting the remaining operations, which are either struggling or currently not functional due to a variety of reasons, on tender before the end of this month.
“At the end of the day as government, we would like to see each and every asset owned by ZMDC getting into production,” he said.
The mining sector, currently the biggest foreign currency earner, is one of the key sectors on which Government is relying in its push for Zimbabwe to attain a middle income economy status by the year 2030. – New Ziana
