Zimbabwe piles pressure on platinum miners to establish refinery

Zimbabwe has announced plans to introduce a 15 percent tax on raw platinum exports beginning this year as it piles pressure on platinum miners to establish a refinery.

Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa first proposed the tax in 2013 to encourage the miners to process platinum locally but last November, he deferred the tax to 2017 to give miners ample time to establish the refinery.

But in a turn of events, government published a finance bill on Jan. 9 implementing the tax with effect from Jan. 1 this year.

Mines Minister Walter Chidhakwa was quoted by the Herald newspaper Wednesday talking tough and urging the platinum miners to demonstrate concrete progress towards building the refinery if they wanted government to scrap the tax.

He said without tangible evidence, government had no choice but to simply impose the punitive tax.

"If they build the refinery, I will be quite happy to recommend to His Excellency the President, the Minister of Finance and Parliament that we revoke the policy position," he said.

The miners have since raised concern that the tax will further erode their returns.

Zimbabwe holds the world's second largest known platinum reserves after South Africa, with three mining firms owned by Aquarius, Impala Platinum and Anglo American Platinum exploiting the precious metal which they send to neighbouring South Africa for processing. Endi