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CHINESE-made mining equipment worth $5 million is to be delivered to small-scale gold miners in Zimbabwe by the end of August as the first consignment of a much bigger deal that has been in abeyance since 2012, owing to failure by the Southern African country to guarantee a loan from the China Development Bank to fund the acquisition.

Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Fred Moyo told the media in Harare recently, on returning from China, that, under the deal, the Chinese Development Bank will provide a $100-million loan for the acquisition of mining equipment for small-scale miners.

“Government has agreed to guarantee the $100-million loan facility. Previous challenges [with respect to providing a guarantee] resulted in China, through a company called XCMG, offering a $5-million trial tranche.

“I was in China . . . to identify the equipment, and local engineers are set to leave for China [soon] to do pre-shipment inspection. “The equipment is expected by the end of August and commissioning should take place in September or October.”

XCMG Group, the supplier of the equipment, specialises in mining trucks, motor graders, earthmovers, hoisting equipment and spare parts. The company last sold its XCMG, XT873, XT872 backhoe bulk loaders to customers in Africa and South America in 2012.

The plan to mechanise small-scale gold mining is part of a raft of new measures to decriminalise activities in the sector to increase deliveries to the State-owned Fidelity Printers & Refiners (FPR). Other measures are the partial overhauling of regulations banning alluvial mining in riverbeds, banks, wetlands and any land within 200 m of naturally defined banks.

Through the draft Mines and Minerals Amendment Bill, which is now before Parliament, government seeks to legalise riverbed mining, but only if this is done in a joint venture with a government entity. If approved, the Bill will nullify a provision of the Gold Trade Act that makes dealing in gold without a licence a criminal offence.

“[Small-scale miners] have an issue with regard to gold, and the issue is, ‘If you’re legalising us, how far are you going? Are you going as far as reviewing the Gold Trade Act, which is to remove or to amend the requirements of the law that say it’s illegal to possess gold without papers?’

“The small-scale gold mining sector has got challenges in terms of getting papers, but we will formalise them to make sure that they get papers. “There are cases of gold being found inadvertently by those who don’t have papers . . . when people are farming or in water; does someone throw away that gold or take it to the police or the bank if he or she doesn’t have a licence?”

An estimated 500,000 small-scale gold miners operate in Zimbabwe, more than 200,000 of whom do not have mining licences and sell their gold through black market channels. — Mining weekly