mbulelo smpofu
Nokuthaba Brita Ncube, ncubenokuthababrita@gmail.com
The Government has announced plans to set up additional gold centres across provinces to boost gold deliveries to Fidelity Gold Refinery and promote mineral beneficiation and local value-addition.
Fidelity Gold Refinery, a wholly owned subsidiary of Mutapa Investment Fund, operates 17 gold buying centres strategically located across all mining provinces in Zimbabwe.
The Government has identified gold centres as one of the key intervention strategies needed to bridge the gap between small-scale miners and some of their legacy challenges largely centred on a lack of machinery and technical know-how on modern mining methods.
In the 2025 National Budget statement, Finance, Economic Development and Investment Promotion Minister, Professor Mthuli Ncube, noted that the initiative will be financed through collaboration between the Government and the private sector.
He said the Government is committed to reducing the export of raw minerals which are vulnerable to price volatility.
Hence, as part of the mineral beneficiation and local value-addition initiative, the Government will set up additional Gold centres among other key implementations.
Prof Ncube further highlighted the establishment of the Mines to Energy Park located in Mapinga, Mashonaland West province, focusing on processing lithium into lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate, as well as producing graphite anodes.
“Two 375 Megawatts (MW) power plants to support these operations will be established,” he said.
He added that the Government will also call for platinum group metals (PGMs) producers to expedite the establishment of a Base Metal Refinery (BMR), which will facilitate base metal toll refining among platinum producers as part of mineral beneficiation and local value- addition.
Zimbabwe’s mining sector, especially the extraction of gold, has lately been characterised by illicit leakages and it is believed the establishment of gold centres can help restrict obscure movement of the yellow metal.
The gold sector carries huge potential for the Zimbabwe economy with small-scale miners producing about 60 percent of gold receipts which has necessitated consistent efforts to support their production.
The mineral, together with PGMs, are the largest foreign currency earners for Zimbabwe, accounting for more than half the country’s annual export earnings.
