Mining production dwindles in Mozambique’s Zambezia province amid wrangles

Mine production in Mozambique’s Zambezia province fell by 13.8 percent last year due to a dispute over a tantalum mining operation.

Blantyre - 

A wrangle between the Mozambican government and South African mining company TAN Mining and Exploration - with a venture at the Muiane tantalite mine in Mozambique's province of Zambezia - has cost the country a great deal as reports now emerge that the province recorded a
nosedive in mining production by 13.8 percent last year.

Director of Mineral Resources in Zambezi Alfredo Nogueira told the country's daily paper Noticias that the decline in production in 2006 was as a result of a wrangle between the two and that this paralysed the Muiane tantalite mine. The Mozambican government was accusing the mining company of failing to pay its workers and of violating clauses in its contract with the government.

In a bid not to experience the same predicament this year, the Mozambican government has revoked the license it gave TAN Mining and has since granted the same to Swiss-based Highland African Mining, which has been charged with a duty to immediately draw up a plan for its rehabilitation.

The Muiane deposit has a resource of two million tonnes at a grade of 320 parts per million of Ta2O5. Media reports quoted TAN Executive Director Dave Dodd as saying according to the mine plan of a single open pit and with a low stripping ratio will recover 60 percent of this ore at a rate of 420,000 tonnes a year. Muiane has a life span of five years.

Overall, according to Noticias, in 2005 the Zambezia mining industry produced 649.6 tonnes of minerals. The bulk of this - 418.7 tonnes of tantalite, quartz, beryl, morganite, turmalines and other precious stones - were exported to China, South Africa, and Germany.

To boost mineral production in Zambezia, the province is putting in place mechanisms to ensure the involvement of local communities. The government is working to legalize community groups to extract gold in six identified areas. For a start, government has given a group of 120 members in the Alto Molocue district to prospect for gold.

Nogueira told the paper that this new strategy is aimed at involving the communities so that they may benefit from this activity and put an end to complaints that they have not been getting any benefit from mining.

SUBSCRIBE to Mineweb.com's free daily newsletter now.

Print story      Email story      Subscribe to free newsletter
Related Links HISTORICAL NEWS:  Corridor of growth - for who? Can Africa's mining unity plan work? 4, 500 illegal miners expelled from Mozambique CVRD plans massive coal mining operation in Mozambique Irish ready to mine Mozambique Diversification buttresses earnings OTHER PAGES:  JUNIOR MINING AFRICA

Back