LARGE-scale gold producers in Zimbabwe will be allowed to directly export a portion of their production as the country’s central bank eases gold trading, said Reuters.
Citing Farai Masendu, director of exchange control at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Reuters said that miners who increased gold production above their average monthly output would be allowed to directly export that portion.
This would “enable them (gold miners) to secure funding in form of gold loans, to enhance their gold production,” said Masendu.
The central bank-owned Fidelity Printers and Refiners (FPR) is the sole buyer, refiner and exporter of gold in the southern African nation, but has at times struggled to pay producers, said the newswire.
The central bank plans to unbundle FPR into two separate companies and sell a majority stake in the new gold refinery business to miners, said Reuters.
The government says gold worth $1.2bn is illegally exported from Zimbabwe annually. Small-scale miners, which extract most of the precious metal in Zimbabwe, blame low prices and late payments by FPR for the leakages.
The International Crisis Group (ICG), a research company, said in December that payments to small-scale miners are “considerably lower” than the spot price of gold, pushing them to look for more lucrative markets.
The gold is illegally shipped from the southern African nation’s small-scale mines, often to the bullion-trading hub of Dubai, ICG said. Some of those artisanal mines are plagued by violent gangs that have political connections, it said.
Reuters reported last year that gold worth billions of dollars is smuggled out of Africa annually through the United Arab Emirates. Citing customs data, Reuters said the UAE imported $15.1bn in gold from Africa in 2016, but a large portion of that gold supply was not recorded in the exports of African states.
