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Dr John Mangudya

Bianca Mlilo recently in Zvishavane
RESERVE Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) Governor Dr John Mangudya will this week present his mid-term monetary policy review statement, outlining measures to boost confidence in the banking sector. Dr Mangudya told delegates who attended the Great Dyke Business Investment forum in Zvishavane last Friday that there was a need to grow trust in the banking sector on the back of weak depositors’ confidence in the past few years.

“My monetary statement will outline measures that attract confidence as we are there to build Zimbabwe. This is not a one person job but we all have to play our part. This is the time to make sacrifices in order to improve the economy,” said Dr Mangudya.

“This needs us to put our energies into productivity…Next week (this week) I will be announcing a raft of measures, which are meant to increase confidence. We need to increase confidence, and trust. The major missing commodity in this economy is trust.”

He pledged Government’s support to artisanal and small scale miners by improving the ease of doing business. Dr Mangudya said the Government was there to provide the miners with necessary incentives to produce as without production there is no fiscal space.

“We need to minimise the cost of doing business in the country and remove obstacles of production otherwise we will not succeed in what we are doing. Let us all come together to help these artisanal miners as they are an important component to getting forex,” he said.

The Governor said the central bank was aware of the challenges the miners were facing while trying to sell gold to Fidelity Printers, which include getting arrested.

“We do not want people getting arrested for selling gold through the proper channels as we need those minerals. If countries such as Botswana are surviving on diamonds, why can we not do the same?

“For the past 36 years only 580 tonnes has been mined out of about 13 – 15 million tonnes underground hence Zimbabwe has the opportunity to make a lot of money from its resources,” he said.

An artisanal miner, Mr Elijah Ncube, who outlined the challenges they were facing said the miners are operating in abandoned mines or old shafts, which pose a risk to their lives as they are prone to accidents.

Mr Ncube said the miners were also facing challenges of selling their gold to Fidelity Printers as they do not have permits.

He appealed to the responsibile authorities to assist the artisanal miners with safer working environments and legalise their operations to avoid getting arrested.

“Even though we are aware of the dangers we expose ourselves to by operating in disused mines, we do what we do to survive as illegal mining is our livelihood. We would, however, appreciate help from Government so that we do everything above board,” he said.

A legal practitioner Mr Tichaona Chivasa emphasised on the importance of small scale and artisanal miners saying these workers contribute more than the formal or large scale miners in terms of gold.

He urged the Government to formalise these operations and put these miners in structures urgently as the Government risked losing out on revenue. According to the Zimbabwe Miners Federation there are about 500 000 artisanal miners in the country — @BiancaMlilo.