Gwede Mantashe’s bold bid to ease mine doubts
Minister meets June deadline, scraps contentious empowerment rule
After a battle between the mining industry and the Department of Mineral Resources, the release on Friday of the revised Mining Charter could lay to rest a long-running feud and provide the signal for much-needed policy certainty that investors and rating agencies have been calling for. The release of the revised third Mining Charter draft by Minister of Mineral Resources Gwede Mantashe includes the once empowered, always empowered principle, which was scrapped by Mantashe's predecessor, Mosebenzi Zwane, crippling the relationship between the industry and the government. The new Mining Charter states that a mining company that has a black economic empowerment deal and achieved a 26% BEE shareholding but whose BEE partner has since exited the transaction, "shall be recognised as compliant and must within a period of five years from the date of coming into operation of the Mining Charter, 2018, supplement their BEE shareholding from 26% to a minimum of 30%". Zwane's charter was regard...
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