Moz mining, exploration investment rising, thanks to 2002 minerals law reforms
Mining investment in Mozambique grew for the seventh year in succession last year, reports the country’s government.
Investment in the country’s mining sector totalled $217-million in 2007, and total investment in the sector since 2001 is now about $1-billion.
Mining now accounts for 5% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) and its contribution is growing. Maputo hopes that the sector could be providing as much as 15% of GDP as soon as 2010.
The growth in mining and exploration is due to the reform of the country’s minerals legislation in 2002, says Minerals Resources Ministry national director Fátima Momade, “which created the ideal conditions to attract investment”. Mineral and metal resources that have been identified in Mozambique include bauxite, bentonite, beryllium, clays, coal, diatomite, gold, granite, graphite, heavy mineral sands, iron-ore, mica, pegmatite, phosphates, precious and semiprecious stones, tantalite and uranium.
Among mining projects under development in the country are the $1,3-billion Moatize coal project, by Brazil’s Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, expected to be commissioned in the second half of 2010; Irish-domiciled Kenmare Resources’ $450-million Moma titanium minerals project, which started exporting last December; and Corridor Sands’ Chibuto heavy mineral sands project, which would extract both titanium and iron from sand.
Jersey- (British Channel Islands-) based Noventa is focused on tantalum. Its Marropino mine is ramping up production and is currently the only industrial-scale tantalum mine in the country. The company also mines commercial quantities of morganite at Marropino.
Noventa’s Morrua project is expected to come into production in 2009, and the company also has exploration and mining rights for its Mutala project, as well as exploration rights for its Ginama and Gile projects.
South Africa’s Finstone Group quarries granite in Mozambique.
On the exploration side, projects currently under way include Aus- tralia-domiciled Riversdale Mining’s search for coking coal across 23 exploration tenements (with India’s giant Tata Steel as a partner in a number of these), and Mantra Resources – another company listed in Australia – looking for sandstone-hosted uranium.
Mozambique is already a producer of natural gas, through South African petrochemicals giant Sasol’s $1,2-billion Temane gas project, and further exploration for both natural gas and petroleum is taking place, involv- ing a number of major energy companies.
Meanwhile, the authorities in Sofala province, in the centre of the country, have lifted the ban on mining in the Gorongosa district, imposed in 2004. The ban was imposed in an attempt to halt the depredations of illegal artisanal miners, known as garimpeiros, looking for gold, who were operating in disregard of their own safety and of the environment, as well as not paying any taxes on the precious metals they extracted.
Garimpeiro activities polluted the Pungué river and the final straw was a fatal accident, claiming the life of one of the illegal artisanal miners.
