Prov­ince makes moves to un­lock min­ing

The New Age (KwaZulu-Natal) - - Western Cape News - SIHLE MAVUSO sih­lem@the­newage.co.za

DE­SPITE be­ing a largely man­u­fac­tur­ing, agri­cul­tural and tourism prov­ince, KZN is mov­ing to un­lock op­por­tu­ni­ties in its small min­ing sec­tor.

In the prov­ince, min­ing is mainly cen­tred around coal min­ing from Mtu­batuba up to Vry­heid, Dundee and New­cas­tle. Other min­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in­clude ti­ta­nium min­ing around the Em­pan­geniRichards Bay area.

The pro­vin­cial depart­ment of eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment, tourism and en­vi­ron­men­tal af­fairs will to­mor­row host its first min­ing indaba in New­cas­tle, a coal min­ing town in north­ern KZN.

Min­ing equip­ment and in­stru­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, en­gi­neer­ing com­pa­nies, project fi­nanciers and en­trepreneurs who are keen to enter this sec­tor will share the stage at the sum­mit.

MEC Sihle Zikalala said they or­gan­ised the ground-break­ing min­ing sum­mit to un­lock op­por­tu­ni­ties for small en­ter­prises, bud­ding min­ers and emerg­ing in­dus­tri­al­ists along the min­ing in­dus­try value chain.

“We are ex­cited to host the first min­ing sum­mit in KwaZulu-Natal.

My depart­ment has iden­ti­fied the min­ing sec­tor as an in­dus­try that has the po­ten­tial not only to cre­ate jobs but also to de­velop in­dus­tri­al­ists, en­hance the de­vel­op­ment of small and medium en­ter­prises sec­tor and to stim­u­late ben­e­fi­ci­a­tion and en­trepreneur­ship among the pre­vi­ously dis­en­fran­chised,” Zikalala said.

Zikalala said the sum­mit would be of­fi­cially opened by Min­eral Re­sources Min­is­ter Gwede Man­tashe and it will be char­ac­terised by high-level in­puts from var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in the min­ing space in or­der to en­sure rapid in­clu­sion of more black Africans in this re­ward­ing sec­tor.

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