[miningmx.com] — PLANS by government to speed up beneficiation of South Africa’s minerals are a step in the right direction which will help to grow the economy and create much-needed jobs.
Nchaka Moloi, the chairperson of the South African Mining Development Association, a grouping of junior miners, said on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba conference last week that beneficiation of local minerals would enable the country to diversify away from mining and boost industrial exports.
“We are a country that is well endowed with natural resources, but at some point these resources will be depleted,’ Moloi said.
He said beneficiation, also known as minerals-processing, could in years to come turn South Africa into a high-tech industrialised nation with a significant skills base.
Moloi’s views were echoed by Anna Mokgokong, the chairperson of Namane Resources, who believes that thousands of jobs could be created if local minerals were made into manufactured goods before being exported.
“If we implement the beneficiation strategy, the mining industry will have a local market for its production instead of shipping everything overseas. I fully support beneficiation because it is the way to go for jobs,’ she said.
In his State of the Nation address, President Jacob Zuma announced that plans were afoot to adopt beneficiation as government’s official policy.
“The private mining companies are not willing to champion beneficiation. It must be well funded and well resourced and it must be underpinned by an aggressive skills-development programme,’ Moloi said.
He saw organisations such as Mintek and the Industrial Development Corporation playing a major role in supporting beneficiation in terms of providing technical and funding assistance. Mintek is a technology organisation which specialises in processing minerals.
Although there is no clarity at this stage on what minerals African Exploration Mining and Finance Corporation – the state-owned mining company – will invest in, Moloi saw it investing in strategic energy-related resources such as coal and uranium.
He also saw the state-owned mining firm snapping up infrastructure-related minerals such as iron, manganese and chrome, which are in high demand in booming economies such as China and India.
“I don’t think it will be involved in gold and diamond mining because they are luxury-related and therefore not strategic minerals,’ Moloi said.
Zuma said the company would take advantage of the opportunities in the local mining sector, which has assets valued at about $2.5 trillion.
– City Press
