By: OrePulse

South Africa's Minerals Council unveiled an Investment and Growth Strategy on October 7, aiming to steer new capital into exploration, new mine development and existing operations across the country's mining industry, the industry body said.

Minerals Council president Paul Dunne, who also heads platinum producer Northam Platinum, said most of the 70 billion rand currently committed to investment in the sector is intended to sustain existing production levels rather than expand them. He said the strategy starts with the view that the industry's difficulties lie in the operating and regulatory environment, not in the quality of the country's mineral resources. "South Africa's mining challenges are not a function of geology, resource quality or investor interest," Dunne said.

The strategy points to a sustained decline in the sector's competitiveness over more than two decades. Mining output remains below the levels recorded more than 20 years ago, exploration spending has fallen by about 80 percent over that period, and South Africa now attracts less than 1 percent of global exploration capital, the Council said.

It named logistics constraints, unreliable electricity and water infrastructure, crime and illegal mining, and a lack of policy and administrative certainty as the main factors holding back new investment in the sector.

The Council estimated that lifting the mining sector's annual growth rate to 3 percent could add roughly 65 billion rand to gross domestic product and create between 50,000 and 100,000 jobs by 2035.

Mining is one of three priority sectors under a Government-Business Partnership, the strategy said, and three workstreams tied to that partnership are now under way. One is intended to cut administrative bottlenecks, with a target of unlocking more than 50 billion rand in capital expenditure by February 2028. A second is examining where South Africa's mining sector has fallen behind competing jurisdictions. A third is working toward the launch of a national mining cadastre system, intended to digitize the management of mineral rights and licensing, by March 2027.

The Minerals Council South Africa represents companies across the country's mining industry and said the strategy will guide its engagement with government on policy, regulatory and investment issues facing the sector in the years ahead.