The Department of Mineral Resources has promised to work with small business owners in the diamond industry to ensure they have access to rough stones.
|||The Department of Mineral Resources has promised to work with small business owners in the diamond industry to ensure they have access to rough stones.
Department spokesman Bheki Khumalo, said yesterday that the ministry was committed to carving out opportunities for small businesses to beneficiate gems.
Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources Godfrey Oliphant met with members of the United Diamond Association of SA (Udasa) on Monday.
Siyabonga Ndabezitha, the chief director for diamond beneficiation at the department, said the biggest challenge of small and medium enterprises was lack of access to rough diamonds.
“They had hoped the State Diamond Trader (SDT) would meet their expectations. Everyone is complaining that businesses had to close down or scale down because no diamonds were available”.
He said the ministry had asked the business owners to indicate how many people they could employ if diamonds were made available.
“The business owners told us the quality of graduates did not meet their expectations. We agreed to interrogate the curriculum offered at institutions to establish why they are not meeting expectations.”
Udasa chairman Ernest Malakoane said Oliphant had assured them that small diamond businesses would have the diamonds they needed in order to employ more people.
“Oliphant has made a positive promise to us. He has attended to our problem of not having access to rough diamonds,” Malakoane said.
Small business owners in the diamond sector have been up in arms since 2008 when the government introduced the Diamond Amendment Bill 2005.
The bill combined the introduction of the South African Diamond and Precious Metals Regulator and the SDT.
Khumalo said the SDT had a mandate to ensure that there was access to rough diamonds for a cross section of cutters and polishers of diamonds. However, the state buyer could only access up to 10 percent of what South Africa produced on a run-of-mine basis.
“The SDT has constraints (although) it is one of the readily available sources of rough diamonds. The ministry is confident that the industry will turn around from the negative effects of the worst economic downturn in years.”
He said the deputy minister and small business owners at the meeting had committed to a period of three months to put together a programme in order to achieve these objectives. A further assessment would be conducted after that period.
“Many factories are lying idle operating at a barely skeletal level, while the South African diamond miners are exporting even more of their production,” Malakoane said.
Small business owners agreed at the meeting to form a representative forum that would liaise with the ministry to collect information on local diamond factories. - Dineo Matomela
Source: http://www.iol.co.za/state-vows-to-help-small-firms-access-rough-gems-1.1053761
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