Zim importing coal

By Blessings Mashaya

Zimbabwe is importing coal from Mozambique for tobacco curing, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor John Mangudya has said.

Speaking at the tour of Feruka in Mutare organised by Verify Engineering, Mangudya said the country has been forced to import because Hwange is not producing.

Hwange, in which Zimbabwe’s government is the biggest shareholder with 37 percent shares, is the nation’s second largest coal producer and supplies coke to national electricity company Zesa Holdings.

“I was asked by the ambassador here that are we importing coal and I said ‘yes, we are importing coal from Mozambique,Tete, for curing of our tobacco’. Why? Because Hwange is not producing, but not that there is no coal in reserves, the coal is there, and please universities help us.”

Hwange mines coal in the northwest of Zimbabwe on some of the southern African country’s richest coal deposits.

In January, Hwange Colliery gave a cautionary statement regarding its debt management plan.

The coal supplier, listed on the JSE, had nearly $13m of debt due in the next 12 months and $17m in longer-term loans.

The 2016 interim results to end-June showed the company had current liabilities of $311m, of which $256m was under trade and other payables; against current assets of $61m, of which just $360 000 was cash. Daily News