The government has repossessed over 80 mining concessions under the “use-it or lose-it” policy and a formal announcement will be made in due course.
Speaking to State media in a recent interview, Mines and Mining Development Minister Winston Chitando said that the government will soon issue a formal announcement regarding the repossessed idle assets. He said:
The ‘use-it or lose-it’ policy has been implemented. We will have formal announcements in due course.
But we have repossessed over 80 assets and we will do a formal update on that, and we will continue to do that (repossessing).
We have always warned that the time was up for all those mining titleholders who were holding onto the concessions for speculative tendencies at the expense of the country.
Under the ‘Zimbabwe is open for business’ mantra, those repossessed assets will be reallocated to potential investors who really want them for productive purpose in line with the National Development Strategy 1 Agenda.
The repossessed assets were in sub-sectors that include gold, coal, and chrome, among others.
In 2020, the government announced that it was also looking forward to re-sizing some of the concessions with a huge resource base and inordinate life spans and allocate them to potential investors.