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Brighton Gumbo Business Reporter
GOLD has dominated Zimbabwe’s export earnings after raking in $503 million since the beginning of the year, latest data from the Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency shows.

The data indicates that since the beginning of the year total export receipts amount to $2.2 billion and gold accounts for 24 percent of the revenue.

Tobacco, which used to dominate export receipts was on second spot after registering $481.2 million, representing 23 percent of the total value of the export inflows during the period under review.

Nickel ore and concentrates raked in $192.3 million, ferrochrome $134.8 million and industrial diamonds $137.6 million.

Sugar cane exports contributed $95.5 million with electrical energy at $37 million, while platinum worth $36.5 million was exported during the period under review.

An economic commentator, Bongani Ngwenya said the statistics were not surprising as gold had a long history of being one of Zimbabwe’s major foreign currency earners.

He said gold usually competes with agricultural commodities such as cotton and tobacco.

He commended the government for liberalising the mining sector which has seen an increase in small-scale miners that are now contributing significantly to the national gold output.

However, Ngwenya said there was a need to put measures in place to curb the smuggling of the mineral to neighbouring countries such as South Africa and Botswana.

In February, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe mobilised $50 million for an accelerated gold production programme that is expected to see the country realising about $1.5 billion from gold exports by 2020.

Over the period 2012 to 2014, the country witnessed a decline in deliveries by large scale gold producers from 10,86 tonnes in 2012 to about 9.96 tonnes in 2014.

During the same period gold deliveries from small-scale miners increased by 51.1 percent from 2.6 tonnes in 2012 to 3.9 tonnes last year due support initiatives by the government.