Farai Mabeza, Senior Staff Writer 
THE governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, John Mangudya, has warned that if the country holds on to too much raw minerals for value addition, it could lose significant revenue.
According to findings from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, major minerals produced in the country, such as nickel concentrates and mattes, are exported in semi-processed or raw form, and legislators have been pushing the executive to impose tariffs on the export of unprocessed minerals to promote beneficiation.
Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor, John Mangudya
Mangudya, however, cautioned that the country would lose huge amounts of revenue if it tried to force beneficiation.
“It takes time to put up a plant for value addition. I have heard many people say we are losing value.
“I think what we need is to strike a balance between value addition and selling (minerals) as concentrate because sometimes minerals are minerals and by the time we try to produce a final product the technology has changed.
“Meanwhile, you are holding on to gold thinking that you are going to make gold chains or diamond rings,” Mangudya told a mining indaba recently.
“Meanwhile, opportunity costs, you have lost money.”
He added that the government was firmly in favour of the value-addition drive but urged a balanced approach.
“When you are talking about value addition, its good in principle, but it takes time so we need the balance between selling concentrate and value addition,” Mangudya said.
“We are for value addition but we need to strike a balance (because) time is never on our side.”
The central bank chief applauded the mining sector, which he said was doing well in spite of some of the challenges highlighted in the State of the Mining Survey industry report for 2022.
“What we are seeing in mining is a success story, we have seen investment going up. We are seeing lithium, steel making at Manizhe.
“Therefore, in the success story there are always teething problems of which foreign currency is one of them, so is electricity and others. But we need to celebrate success,” Mangudya said.
“Our permanent solution to the issue of foreign currency in this country is about stabilising our economy. We need to ensure that our inflation is stable and low enough. From Rhodesia up to now, foreign currency has never been enough so there has always been exchange controls.
“So we need to ensure that those spaces where we can use local currency, we use local currency. But for local currency to have value we need to ensure that inflation is stable and low,” Mangudya said.
Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Kurai Matsheza recently said industrialisation was key in expanding the economy.
“There is a need to diversify, obviously, our production processes. Mining and services are coming up but more than 70 percent of our exports are mineral based.
“In terms of the export diversification index, Zimbabwe is about 2,5, which is even lower than countries such as Somalia. The higher the number the less diversified you are.
“So, the ideal situation is to move closer to zero,” Matsheza told a national exporters’ conference last week.
“Only 18 percent of products exported by Zimbabwe have shown some competitive advantage.”
Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce president Mike Kamungeremu also emphasised the need for innovation.
“What is critical for us as a country is that we continue innovating so that we produce more and more goods that are attractive to markets.
“ZimTrade is leading the country in gathering intelligence and ensuring that we sell more to these markets,” Kamungeremu said.
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