EDITORIAL COMMENT: Getting serious about serious business

14 Sep, 2014 - 06:09 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

For a country that prides itself on having the highest literacy rate in Africa, and an education system that trumps those found elsewhere on the continent, Zimbabwe sure has a strange way of demonstrating that it is peerless.

Since 2008 or thereabouts, there has been a stream of complaints about how the country manages its mining sector, in particular the diamond industry.

In that time, we have somehow failed to significantly improve the situation on the ground, and reports still abound of malpractices and inefficiencies as regards diamonds in Chiadzwa.

We have all heard about how some of the people in the diamond sector think of it as a murky world in which corruption is not only tolerated but is in fact expected.

But that need not be the case.

Government has this year often talked of reforming and restructuring the diamond extraction sector to ensure the nation benefits more from its resources.

This includes consolidating operations at Chiadzwa under one or two companies to make things easier to manage and more transparent.

The need to do that as quickly as possible cannot be overstated.

At present, we are getting reports that some miners are deliberately dumping their lowest quality diamonds on State-organised auctions and then smuggling out the better stuff.

This means Government makes far less than it should from the auctions, and also means that the companies — or at least individuals in them — make a bundle that is untaxed.

Further, there has been much talk about value addition and beneficiation locally.

It is important to get this ball rolling for two primary reasons.

The first is the more obvious; we stand to make more money from beneficiated and value added products than from selling raw gems.

Just this past week, Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa was talking of a projected huge slump in mining revenue in 2014 because of weak international prices.

Surely this can be mitigated by beneficiation and value addition.

Secondly, local value addition and beneficiation will help minimise the possibility of unscrupulous miners smuggling out high-quality stones.

At present, reports indicate, we are not even doing the basics of value addition such as simple cleaning of stones before we ship them off for international diamond tenders.

As such, these little things are done for us at unnecessary cost in Dubai and Antwerp. Naturally, anyone would be forgiven to think that this is being done deliberately so that someone can make extra money at the expense of the entire nation.

Zimbabwe needs to go further than value addition and beneficiation and must situate all aspects of the industry locally, which means selling the processed diamonds in Zimbabwe.

Again, Government talks about this imperative, but things seem to just move too, too slowly. As if someone somewhere is against such a move because it would stump his/her corrupt inclinations.

There are simply too many loopholes in the present arrangement that give succour to the corrupt.

As educated as Zimbabweans are, we should be learning and implementing international best practices.

It should not be difficult for us to learn from our supposedly less literate and less educated friends in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa.

And when all is said and done, the State must show its commitment to fighting graft by arresting the corrupt and seizing their ill-gained assets.

The message should be clear to all Zimbabweans and the rest of the world that this country is serious about doing serious business.

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