HARARE, Nov 13 (Reuters) – Zimbabwe will vigorously enforce a policy to force companies to develop their mining assets and not keep the land for speculative purposes, mines minister Winston Chitando said on Wednesday.
Chitando said some investors had not developed gold and platinum assets that they had held dating back to the 1960s and the mines ministry had asked some companies to justify why they should keep their claims to those assets.
“This is to prohibit the holding of mining title for speculative purposes. We will deal with that more vigorously,” Chitando told a meeting of the mining industry in Harare.
Chitando said the government had been lax in enforcing the “use it or lose it” policy but that would change as authorities pin their hopes on the sector to drive the recovery of an economy grappling with power cuts and acute shortages of U.S. dollars and fuel.
Miners have raised concerns over power cuts that have affected production and want to be allowed to keep all their foreign currency earnings because they are disadvantaged by having a proportion paid to them in Zimbabwe dollars.
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