Cyril has a big mining role to play

Industry’s revival possible – IRR report

ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has a key role to play in replacing the present hostile environment in mining with policies that welcome and encourage the industry.

This is according to a report by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR). The report is a survey of mining’s critical role in the economy and in the lives of people‚ both in mining communities and far beyond them.

It cautions that without an absolutely fundamental improvement in the policy environment‚ mining will continue its slow decline‚ attracting substantially less investment than the country’s resources and technical expertise warrant.

The report says that although the mining sector no longer dominates the economy as it once did‚ it accounts for a major proportion of the country’s earnings of foreign exchange. The author of the report‚ IRR policy fellow John Kane-Berman‚ said there were two ways of looking at mining in South Africa.

“The first is to see it as a sunset industry plagued by rising costs‚ technical difficulties and political hostility. The second is to see it as an industry well positioned for a new lease of life despite all the vicissitudes‚” Kane-Berman said.

He said even though the attractiveness of SA for mining investment had declined‚ the country still had the world’s richest reserves of precious minerals and base metals.

The report said Ramaphosa’s election as ANC president and comments he made at the World Economic Forum in Davos caused some mining executives to adopt a mood of cautious optimism. –