[miningmx.com] — NAMIBIA’S government will pay N$375m to increase its stake in De Beers’ offshore operations, which mine the world’s biggest marine diamond deposit, the Namibian Sun reported on Friday.
Citing a leaked cabinet memo, the paper said that De Beers, 45% owned by Anglo American, will put its marine operations under Namdeb, currently a 50-50 joint venture between De Beers and the Namibian government.
This will raise the government’s stake in the profitable marine operations to 50% from 15% at the moment.
Namdeb, which only mined land operations so far, will be restructured into two separate subsidiaries for land and sea.
Neither the government, De Beers nor Namdeb were available for comment.
The government will pay for the increased stake from the N$635.6m it has been owed by Namdeb in overdue dividend payments since 2006, the paper added.
The Namibian Diamond Trading Company sold 991,000 carats of diamonds produced from marine operations last year, far above the 531,000 diamonds sold from onshore mines.
Namdeb said last year it planned to invest $1bn in the next 10 years to extend the life of its onshore diamond mining operations.
