DMR’s inefficiency scuppers R3.2 billion job creating deal
11 November 2015
Poor regulation and inefficiencies at the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) have rendered yet another job creating mining deal stillborn. Chinese investors, Beijing Hehe Fengye Investments, were waiting only on approvals from the DMR to pour approximately R3.2 billion into reviving the mothballed Crocodile River platinum mine. This massive investment could potentially have created thousands of job opportunities – an opportunity now lost.
Selling off unprofitable shafts instead of closing them was identified in the recent agreement between government, business and labour as an opportunity to save jobs in the face of impending mass retrenchments across the mining industry. Indeed the private sector, and even foreign investors, are coming to the party in this respect. Government, however, continues to be an obstacle to, rather than a facilitator of, investment and job creating initiatives in the sector.
This is not the first mining deal that cumbersome regulation and the dithering and somnolent bureaucracy at the DMR have scuppered a job saving investment like this. A Chinese deal to save two other shafts was also recently killed after delays at the DMR forced the deal’s deadline to be extended nine times and then ultimately scrapped altogether. Next to go may be the Chinese Baosteel’s investment in the Aquila Steel South Africa manganese mining project in the Northern Cape which is still tangling with the DMR over five years after submitting it’s mining right application despite otherwise having been ready to commence operations years ago.
Minister of Mineral Resources, Mosebenzi Zwane, who has been at his post for less than two months, needs to decide urgently if he will lead his department into simplifying the regulatory regime and efficient management of license applications or whether he will instead continue his predecessors’ legacy of stifling investment and decimating jobs in the sector.
Statement issued by James Lorimer, DA Shadow Minister of Mineral Resources, 11 November 2015
