Govt blocks ‘looting’ investor

ill-practice by ACF.

“MMCZ is correcting the mess and the Moti group thinks we are being unreasonable. They have been milking the country and we cannot continue to allow nonsense like that, because if you do the numbers you will realise that the country has been subsidising their operations.

“They (ACF) claimed that they had a ferry chrome plant in South Africa for further processing the ore (but) we do not believe they have.

“What is really unacceptable is that they were exporting chrome ore, alluvial and stuff for onward beneficiation in South Africa but we are of the view that they were not beneficiating, they were just exporting and the country was getting nothing.

“The other unfortunate part is that somewhere along the way, someone, I really don’t know what they were thinking, gave them national project status and why they got it I just don’t know but we will sort it out,” he said.

Efforts to get a comment from ACF and the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development were unsuccessful by the time of going to print but the Ministry is on record saying it was pushing for chrome beneficiation as a means to boost revenue and creating jobs through smelters.

In an interview with this publication in June, Mines and Mining Development Deputy Minister Polite Kambamura said Government had gotten assurance from the private sector that they will accelerate beneficiation and in turn had decided to park a beneficiation penalty.

“. . . we had introduced a two percent beneficiation penalty tax for all the chrome that was being exported as concentrates or lumpy but the miners came to us and asked that we suspend the penalty,” the Deputy Minister told this publication in June.