(NEWZIMBABWE) Kasukuwere threatens to seize mines

Friday, February 24, 2012

(NEWZIMBABWE) Kasukuwere threatens to seize mines

Kasukuwere threatens to seize mines
24/02/2012 00:00:00
by Business Reporter

EMPOWERMENT Minister Saviour Kasukuwere has warned that the government will seize mining companies resisting the country’s empowerment programme adding those still to comply have two weeks to submit acceptable proposals.

Kasukuwere told a parliamentary committee Thursday that between 20 to 30 mining companies were dragging their feet over the indigenization programme under which requires foreign companies sell a 51 percent stake to local Zimbabweans.

“We have had challenges that some companies were dilly dallying and we are no longer going to negotiate with them. We have closed all negotiations with mining firms and what we want is to see compliance with the law,” he said.

“We have now indicated to them, about 20 to 30 companies that were dillydallying, that the time for negotiations is over. We have given them two weeks to lodge their plans on transfer of shares.”

“The companies that refuse to comply will leave us no option but to take them over, the law is clear on that one.”

Kasukuwere said some 200 companies have submitted proposals for complying with the legislation adding 54 have been accepted while the rest are still being assessed.

“There is a law and I am not going to negotiate with anyone in its implementation. If anyone wants to change the indigenisation law they must bring it to Parliament,” he said.

“None of them (the three principals) said they do not want the law. We sit together in Cabinet and they have never said they do not want the law.”

The MDC formation led by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has however demanded a new “genuine” empowerment policy, blasting the current programme as “asset stripping and self aggrandizement” by members of an already wealthy black elite.

“The party restates that Zanu PF’s programme … is based on a narrow model of transferring shares to a few black elite that can afford them and does not amount to genuine wealth creation and distribution,” the party said following a meeting of its national council in December.

“The (MDC-T) therefore calls for the starting afresh of the whole programme and the development of a genuine broad-based upliftment programme which balances the need to attract investment, grow the economy and create jobs.”

Economic commentators have also warned that the programme could undermine much-needed foreign investment in an economy struggling to recover from a decade-long recession.

Labels: INDIGENIZATION AND EMPOWERMENT ACT (ZIMBABWE), NATIONALISATION, SAVIOUR KASUKUWERE