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Zimbabwe’s government has given foreign companies including miners and banks a 14-day ultimatum to submit plans on how they propose to transfer majority stakes to local owners or risk losing permits, state media reported on Friday.
However, immediately thereafter the country’s central bank governor Gideon Gono launched a scathing attack on the minister responsible for the indigenization policy saying the threats “could irreparably harm the nerve-centre of the recovering economy.”
Before a new unity government in 2009 Zimbabwe economy had shrank by as much as half over the preceding decade amid hyperinflation, property seizures and civil unrest. The country is the number two platinum producer in the world and rich in gold and diamonds.
Gono’s comments is a clear sign of the divisions that still exists within the unity government between the opposition MDC and President Robert Mugabe who has been leader of the country for more than 30 years and championed the legislation which was enacted in 2008.
Under Zimbabwe’s indigenization policy mining companies were granted until the beginning of June to submit proposals about transferring majority ownership but the government then rejected 175 of these plans from mines because they had proposed selling only a 25% stake and making social responsibility investments to obtain credits for the remainder.
The Wall Street Journal reports Barclays and Standard Chartered, British American Tobacco and Swiss food giant Nestlé and a number of miners including Rio Tinto and Impala Platinum were sent letters.
4 Comments
Tonynulty
Zimbabwe will never change untill Mugabe is gone.
Mininginformation
Agree he is a demon. If the there was Oil the Yanks would have taken him out by now :-p
Jimmy2trees
Funny, Zimbabwe use to be the richest country in Africa, back when it was Rhodesia. Now its one of the poorest, thanks to Mugabe. Maybe its time for the people of Zimbabwe to resist his dictatorship, and get new leadership. Theres no reason they couldnt return to there former financial might.
Informed
I would expect opinions like this from most hypocrites and misinformed idiots….Mugabe has never been a dictator but was rather made a persona non grata by the west’s propaganda and determination to recolonise a prosperous african country, he gave them the middle finger after they hade made empty promises to him and his people on the land issue and what did they do, impose sanctions, get your facts straight and recognise a legitimate leader who won’t kiss butt at the expense of africans…