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Business Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Miners Federation will use this week’s Mining, Engineering and Transport Exhibition, Mine Entra, to highlight the success of the country’s small mining sector, the federation’s first vice president, Mr Morgan Moyo, said yesterday. He said there were few countries on the continent that had successful small scale miners.

Mr Moyo said they wanted to use Mine Entra to promote small scale mining in other parts of the African continent.
This year’s edition of Mine Entra starts tomorrow and ends on Friday.

It is being held under the theme Extract Value, Boost Economic Growth.
The organisers of the exhibition have said small scale miners would get more recognition at Mine Entra this year, which in past years has focused on large mining houses.

“We want the whole of Africa to know about small scale miners. We want to enlighten other countries so that their citizens can engage in small scale mining in a proper way,” said Mr Moyo, who was elevated to his post at the weekend.

He said while Mine Entra would also provide an opportunity to meet investors, their belief was that Zimbabweans should use their resources to uplift themselves.

Mr Moyo said they wanted to end the dependence syndrome of always going to the government to look for assistance.
He said he was going to advocate the opening of savings clubs among small scale miners so that they pool resources for their growth.

Mr Moyo also said gold buyer, Fidelity Printers and Refiners, should set up a bank to enable miners to deposit proceeds from sales at its gold buying centres.

He said at present, members of the association were exposed to various temptations because they were moving around with large sums of cash after selling their gold in remote buying centres, resulting in some “blowing away” the money before doing anything useful.

The bank could also avail loans to miners based on their production record as most were failing to access loans from commercial banks, he said.
Meanwhile, the ZMF is set to commission the first of its milling centres in Silobela.

Mr Moyo said the federation had set up milling centres in the country’s seven mining districts where members could take their ore for milling.
He said the Government, through the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development, was heavily involved in the setting up of the centres.