SMALL-SCALE miners have pledged to increase gold production this year by more than 25 tonnes, given that the government continues to give them a favourable operating environment.
According to ZMF, the apex government body that represents small-scale gold miners, artisanal miners contribute 60% of the total gold production in the country
Last year gold output reached 35,3 tonnes, figures from Fidelity Gold Refinery show, with small-scale producers contributing 25 tonnes to the total output.
The government is targeting 100 tonnes of gold per annum by 2023.
Henrietta Rushwaya, the president of the Zimbabwe Miners Federation (ZMF) revealed that small-scale miners have a capacity to increase gold production.
“Through the help that we have been getting from the government like the US$10 million grant to small scale miners and many others, it has encouraged us to produce more,” she said.
“In 2022, we produced around 25 tonnes of gold, and this has automatically made the small scale mining industry a billion dollar industry and we wish to increase our production and if the government continues to give us a favourable environment we will definitely be in a space to produce more.”
ZMF boss added: “We have heavy rains that befell us during the last rainy season but for January the small scale miners did 961 kilogrammes and in February we did 1,1 tonnes and in March we did 1,579 tonnes, in April we did 1,47 tonnes, in May we did 1,8 tonnes and in June we managed 1,7 tonnes.
“As you can see our gold production has been increasing exponentially simply because we get adversely affected by the rains, so what is good for the farmer is bad for the miner.
“We are almost there in terms of our production levels and we would like to encourage our small-scale miners that within the remaining quarter we should produce more than we produced in the previous season in an effort to beat the 25 tonne target.” – (Newsday)
