By Rorisang David Mahlo
The government of Lesotho through
the Ministry of Mining has decided to fortify the Mining Policy with strategic
and Implementation plans. The development
of these strategic tools has brought about a thirst to see the policy
addressing the Mining Policy issues. So, the Ministry of Mining has embarked on
a campaign to develop the Strategic and Implementation Plans as a mode of
operationalising the recently launched Minerals and Mining Policy of 2015. This
campaign started at Maseru Avani on 23-24 of October 2017 with a group of
Mining Stakeholders.
This campaign is aimed at consolidating the views and
opening up the platform for the stakeholders to build up an inclusive and
stakeholder concerted and informed plans. The objective is to device plans that
will directly address all ten (10) thematic areas and numerous strategies
reflected under each thematic area in the Mining Policy. Moreover the Ministry
is hoping to develop plans that are going be user-friendly to both players and
regulators without any prejudice.
In his opening remarks, the Minister of Mining, Hon.
Keketso Sello emphasised that amongst many important areas, this implementation
plan should cover a revised legal and regulatory framework for the policy to
enable institutional reforms, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation
plan. “In order for this policy to be successfully implemented there should be
a comprehensive implementation plan and strategies in the areas of capacity
development of the ministry in issues related to human resources and institutional
reforms,” said Hon. Sello.
Hon. Sello added that as we all know that minerals are
non-renewable resources, there has to be a clear strategy on how we can use the
revenue accruing from the mining sector to strengthen other sustainable sectors
that have potential to reduce unemployment and accelerate economic growth.
Most importantly he also reminded the stakeholders
that the National Strategic Development Plan I (NSDPI) has identified mining as
one of the growth accelerators and the industry is poised to contribute an
estimated growth of more than 10% to the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) in the
future.
In order to achieve the Ministerial mandate Hon. Sello
showed that, as a country there is a need to diversify into exploration of other
minerals using modern and more appropriate technologies and such information
being availed so that investment can grow within the sector. “Most
significantly we need to create conducive environment for mining including
downstream activities,” said Hon. Sello.
He went further to highlight what the NSDP Chapter on
Mining provides for the sector as thus: “The NSDP Chapter on Mining caters for
a number of strategies for the development of the mining sector as it advocates
for augmentation for mineral resource intelligence systems and access to
information on natural resources; improvement of policy and legal frameworks to
address emerging issues and adoption of the best practices; increase value
addition and improve marketing systems for mined products; development of the
necessary skills base; and enhance investment promotion and local
participation/ownership,” Minister Sello
sighed with the optimism to achieve.
On the other side and on behalf of the stakeholders,
the Lesotho Chamber of Mines representative Mr. Mohale Ralikariki showed that
the “exploitation of the country’s mineral resources requires foreign direct
investment (FDI) and therefore, Mining policy and its Strategic and
Implementation plans must be shaped, in manner that will assist in attracting
FDI to create growth, which in turn will generate jobs, increase tax inflows,
royalties, dividends,” reported Mr. Ralikariki.
Adding that both regulators and industry players must
be cognisant of the fact that we have to compete globally for FDI and “currently
our ranking by the World Bank in their annual ‘Doing Business Report’ is
100/190 (ranking was 128/189 in 2015),” said Ralikariki.
Furthermore Mr. Ralikariki cited ‘Fraser Institute,
2017’ where it is laying down the
twelve (12) critical factors that international investors consider before
undertaking any business activity in any country. Among them were the
following and in no particular order of importance:
The regulatory framework –
with certainty, minimal duplications/departmental overlap, stability of licence
renewals;
Legal system – that is
fair, transparent, non-corrupt, and efficient;
Infrastructure –such as
roads, power and water;
Political stability – that
has continuity of political institutions and policies;
Labour resources – reference
to the availability of labour and skills, labour peace, access to foreign
workers where skills are unavailable locally.
In a nutshell Mr. Ralikarik
presented to the workshop that, if we currently do not have these phenomena
listed above, he suggests that they must be the stakeholders’ priorities and be
the first to be done in order to attract even more investors for future.
As a word of advice to both
the Ministry and Stakeholders Mr. Ralikariki recommended that both parties must
take steps to make Lesotho the mostly preferred FDI destination, and do away
with anything that will dissuade our investors.
Lastly, in an interview
with the Media, the Principal Secretary of Mining Mr. Soaile Mochaba told the
media that this is just the beginning of the campaign. The Ministry is yet to
host even more and regular kinds of similar workshops of stakeholders
throughout the country so as to ensure its inclusiveness.
In general, the Ministry of Mining, decided to develop
a Minerals and Mining Policy, the very first policy for the sector which was
approved by Cabinet in 2015, and officially launched in September, 2016. The
Ministry solicited technical assistance from the United Nations Economic
Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP) towards developing this policy.
Prior to the development of this policy there was no such policy
document to give a strategic direction and guide the implementation of the
Government’s goals in the minerals and mining sector.
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