Zimbabwe Government to Take Over Nation's Large Mining Industry

The government of Zimbabwe has gone ahead with the creation of a minerals marketing board - much to the chagrin of foreign multinationals that dominate the mining sector, the chief foreign exchange earner of the Zimbabwean economy.

Mining minister Maurice Nyagumbo introduced legislation on January 19 to implement the widely-discussed idea of a marketing board (MM, March and April 1981). The bill grants the government of Zimbabwe full authority to "purchase and acquire" and "sell or dispose of" all minerals except gold.

The Mineral Marketing Corporation, expected to be in operation by September, will be composed of an eight - person, board, appointed by Nyagumbo.

The mining companies may find their activities severely curtailed, and they are none too pleased about it.

"We were certainly disappointed," said James Rawlings, chairman of Union Carbide Southern Africa, the ,largest U.S. multinational in Zimbabwe's mining industry. "It represents a sort of a nationalization of the commercial end of business," he told Multinational Monitor in a telephone interview.

Union Carbide operates three primary chrome mining centers and one smelting complex with a capacity of 210,000 metric tons of non-carbon ferrochrome a year.

Carbide "hasn't made any substantial investment since the new government came in" two years ago, said Rawlings. Now with the marketing board getting under way, Carbide and others may look askance at any additional investments. "It's going to have a very dampening effect on any new investment," Rawlings said, if it "is implemented to the fullest degree."