(Bloomberg) -- Zimbabwe plans to implement “rational” mining royalties and taxes and to deregulate mineral marketing to attract as much as $16 billion in investment by 2018, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said.
Zimbabwe will review its Mines and Minerals Act by the end of the year and aim to conclude investment guarantees with other countries, Tsvangirai said in an e-mailed copy of a speech made today to a mining conference in the capital, Harare. The government is trying to help the country recover from a decade- long recession that ended this year.
“Zimbabwe’s mining sector presents the most immediate opportunity to attract significant investment,” said Tsvangirai, who once worked at an Anglo American Plc nickel mine. “This government, in conjunction with the mining industry, has a window of opportunity to prepare a conducive policy environment by mid-2010.”
Companies have been deterred from investing in Zimbabwe, which has the world’s second-biggest platinum and chrome reserves, due to the economic collapse, political instability, threats of nationalization and a planned law to compel foreign mining companies to sell 51 percent of their assets to black Zimbabweans.
In February President Robert Mugabe and Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader, set up a coalition government after intervention by the Southern African Development Community of neighboring states to end a 10-year political crisis.
