"South Africa: New Mining Charter More Unfavorable Than Expected (For AU & GFI)…: The South African Department of Mineral Resources released its Reviewed Mining Charter this morning, which takes immediate effect. The final version of the Charter includes more stringent requirements for miners than both the Mining Charter previously in effect and the draft revised Mining Charter that was released last year. The South African Chamber of Mines, which represents the vast majority of the miners, characterized the new Charter as being unilaterally imposed on them and is commencing legal actions to suspend the implementation of the Charter. Scotiabank Senior Precious Metals Analyst flagging the key details and impact of the new charter below.
1) Requirements of Revised Charter. i) Black ownership requirement: increased to 30% from 26%, and "once-empowered, always-empowered" concept removed; for green fields projects, the minimum is 50%+1 ii) Procurement: 70% of mining goods/80% of services must be sourced from black economic empowerment (BEE) companies and mineral samples must be processed in-country; additionally locally sourced mining goods must be manufactured in-country iii) Black employment requirement: certain minimum percentages of board members and employees at each organization level must be Black Persons, a portion of which must also be female iv) New 1% BEE Royalty: The 30% BEE owners are to receive a priority 1% gross royalty (not included in the draft).
2) Removal of "once-empowered, always-empowered" concept. In prior versions of the Charter, the BEE ownership requirements were only required to be met at one point in time (i.e. BEEs entities/people could sell their interests and use the proceeds as they pleased). Under the new Charter, a 30% minimum BEE ownership is required in perpetuity.
3) Miners' response: commencing legal action to suspend implementation of Revised Charter. The Chamber of Mines says that unlike for previous iterations of the Mining Charter, it was not substantively consulted in this process and the current version is unworkable. As a result, it plans to immediately commence legal proceedings to delay or reduce the impact of the new Charter, including seeking to suspend implementation of the entire Charter, pending court review of the requirements, and to challenge the removal of the "once-empowered, always-empowered" concept.
4) Impact to AngloGold Ashanti and Gold Fields: 26% of AngloGold Ashanti's (AU-US, SP, US$13.50, Tanya Jakusconek) and Gold Fields' (GFI-US, SP, US$4.00, Tanya Jakusconek) NAV are each related to South African operations. If implemented as-is, the most obvious impacts of to the companies are reduced ownership of and higher costs at their respective operations. At GFI, 10% of its South African operations is already owned by a BEE company, implying that an additional 20% could be required to be given to BEE groups (~$0.30/sh impact). For AU, Tanya understands that BEE groups do not currently have any direct ownership so they could be required to give 30% to BEE groups (~$1/sh). The more stringent procurement requirements in particular could cause costs to increase significant and could impact productivity if equipment selection is reduced".
No comments:
Post a Comment
Commented on MasterMetals