South Africa has gone on the offensive, saying it is making substantial ground on reverting the country’s investment decline in mining and global concerns about mine infrastructure failures earlier this year. Addressing the first day in Perth today of Paydirt 2008 Africa Downunder Resources Conference, the Director General of South Africa’s Minerals and Energy Department, Adv Nogxina, said significant measures were now in place to address issues identified as the cause for declining mining investment in Africa’s former mining powerhouse.

“A task force charged with identifying the cause for the investment decline in recent years found a range of contributing factors, ahead of the power failures this year,” Nogxina said. “These included lack of infrastructure capacity, a paucity of skills, currency fluctuations and uncertainty among prospective mining investors from new mining legislation. In the wake of those findings, we have committed R60 billion to strengthen infrastructure with particular focus on rail, port and pipelines.

“We have better explained the new mining laws and are now meeting our promised turnaround times on issuing licences and permits and have programs in place to expedite the acquisition of priority skills. As a result, the Department has received in just four years, more than 17,000 applications for various types of rights covering a range of mineral commodities – a number unprecedented in South Africa’s mining history.”

Nogxina also discussed the country’s drive to beneficiate its mined resources, as a way to counter the country’s loss to China last year, of the crown of world’s largest gold producer.  “Beneficiating our commodities will enable South Africa to extend the scope of its mining industry beyond its natural life and ensure ongoing investment and job creation. We, last year, reached our highest ever growth in processed minerals – worth R54.8 billion – up 26.3% from the previous year.”

Nogxina lastly discussed how the country is tackling its power generation system – something that has been condemned by global miners operating there due to high levels of outages in the opening quarter of this year. “Since these load shedding incidents, the National Electricity Response Plan (NERP) has led to the commissioning of a further 600 MW of generation capacity by Eskom and an additional 200 MW capacity made available at Cahora Basa”. He continued by saying that energy intensive industries like ferroalloys were being urged to establish cogeneration power plants. “The total impact of the combination of these factors is, we expect, a return to this year and next to higher investment levels in South Africa’s mining sector”.