Botswana's mines minister Onkokame Kitso Mokaila has written to his South African counterpart to expedite the transfer of the mineral rights at the Nkomati Nickel mine to state-owned Botswana Copper, which is one of the central platforms the government will use to diversify its economy away from diamonds.
Botswana Copper unveiled a transaction in October last year for the $337m purchase of Norilsk Nickel's Southern African investments in 50% of Nkomati Nickel it shared with JSE-listed African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) in SA and its 85% stake in Tati Nickel in Botswana, where the government of that country is the junior partner.
Mokaila, speaking on the sidelines of the inaugural Connecting Resources and Society in Botswana conference, said he would even fly to SA to urge his counterpart to approve the transfer by issuing a section 11 notice. Delays from the department in issuing these notices have derailed at least two major transactions in the platinum sector this year.
Any failure to advance the deal would be referred to Botswana's President Ian Khama to take up at a presidential level during annual bilateral engagements early each year, said Mokaila, who is minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources.
"It's now up to ARM to go to the government for the section 11 transfer, so I've written to the mines minister in SA (Mosebenzi Joseph Zwane) to give him a heads-up to say we are in there and can this transfer please hurry because it's taken us too long," Mokaila said.
There are annual bilateral meetings early next year between cabinet ministers of both countries.
"I won't wait for that (meeting). I've already written to the new minister. I'd even fly to Joburg to talk to him.
"If we can't resolve it at our level, it would then go to the presidency," he said. "But all of us are under pressure to maintain our relationship."
Botswana wants to secure concentrate from Nkomati for smelting and refining as part of its strategy to become a regional smelting hub and to give it enough material to justify building a refinery.
Nkomati produces about 20,000 tonnes a year of nickel in concentrate. It also produces about 110,000oz a year of platinum group metals, 9,000 tonnes of copper and 250 tonnes of cobalt.
There are other pressing needs for Mokaila, including water and electricity-generation.
On electricity, the government would decide next week who would build a 300MW power plant, to bring Botswana to the point where it would produce double the 600MW of electricity it needed and putting it in a position to sell power to its neighbours, Mokaila said.
"The target is that by the end of 2018, we should be there. I can say close to dammit, we will be an exporter of power," he said.
Source: Business Day
