Harare — Zimbabwe’s government plans to sign a $700m deal with an investor that will develop a coal-bed methane site, mines minister Winston Chitando has said. The accord comes as President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who took office in November, courts foreign investment to rebuild an economy that halved in size since 2000 under former president Robert Mugabe’s rule. Two other similar agreements are expected in the next two months, Chitando said in a phone interview from Harare on Thursday. "The coal-bed methane projects will be for power and other related products and by-products," he said, declining to identify any of the investors. Most of the output from the project to be signed this month will be "channeled towards the establishment of a power plant," Chitando said. While Zimbabwe’s leadership change has sparked a race for the nation’s mineral riches among entrepreneurs and small explorers, big-name mining companies have taken a wait-and-see approach. Zimbabwe has the world’s second-l...
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