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Zimbabwe’s Zimplats to peg workforce job cuts at 1%

Published

1 month ago

April 11, 2024

Zimplats’ CEO, Alex Mhembere, said on Wednesday that the firm would cut its staff by 1% and make other cost cuts to get through the sharp drop in platinum group metal (PGM) prices.

In March, Zimbabwe’s biggest platinum producer said it was giving voluntary job cuts to try to keep costs down as sales dropped. Southern African PGM miners, like Impala Platinum, Sibanye Stillwater, and Anglo American Platinum (parent company of Zimplats), have all had to cut costs and thousands of jobs because metal prices fell over the past year because of weak auto production and worries about a slowdown in the world economy.

“Through these current headwinds, we are only going to reduce our people by 1% of the total labour complement of 8,000 people that we have,” Mhembere told a PGM mining conference in Johannesburg.

Job cuts were “not the only lever that can sustain the business”, he said. The company wants to keep making about 600,000 PGM ounces a year, and Mhembere said that one way they plan to do that is by increasing production.

He said that Zimplats was cutting back on spending for its $1.8 billion, 10-year growth plan that was announced in 2021. He also said that the company would have “little capital” in its next fiscal year, which begins in July.

“We’re going to spend less. We will only be focusing on our replacement capital expenditure, stay-in-business capex and very little on growth capex,” Mhembere said.

Mhembere said that Zimplats didn’t think that Zimbabwe’s new gold-backed currency, which replaced the Zimbabwe dollar that was destroyed by inflation last week, would hurt their business.

“It is not a threat to us. We operate in United States dollars. This is a local currency and it will not affect our business,” he said.
In November, Reuters reported that Zimbabwean miners, who make a lot of money from exports, would see their profits drop almost 15% in 2024. Half of them are expected to report losses.

The country in southern Africa is famous for having a lot of gold, lithium, and platinum group metals (PGMs). A report from the Zimbabwe Chamber of Mines called Mining Prospects for 2024 said that the mining industry’s income and profit will be hurt by a mix of global and local forces in 2024.

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Nigeria’s inflation hits 28-year high of 33.69% in April

Published

2 hours ago

May 16, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

Nigeria’s consumer inflation reached a 28-year high of 33.69% in April, up from 33.20% in March, according to statistics agency figures released on Wednesday.

President Bola Tinubu’s administration has slashed petrol and energy subsidies and devalued the local naira currency twice.

To manage pricing pressures, the central bank has hiked interest rates twice this year, including the highest hike in almost 17 years. The central bank governor has stated that rates will remain high for as long as necessary to reduce inflation. The bank will host another rate-setting meeting next week.

When compared to the previous year, the inflation rate in April 2024 was 11.47 percentage points more than in April 2023, when it stood at 22.22 percent. This implies that the headline inflation rate has increased dramatically during the last year.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, food and nonalcoholic beverages remained the largest contributor to inflation in April. Food inflation, which accounts for most of the inflation basket, rose to 40.53% yearly from 40.01% in March.

Price pressures have left millions of Nigerians facing the biggest cost-of-living crisis in decades, as they fight to satisfy their most basic necessities.

Tinubu has offered a 35% salary increase for state personnel to alleviate pressure on government workers. To assist disadvantaged households, his government has resumed a direct cash transfer program and provided at least 42,000 tons of grains such as corn and millet.

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Uganda discusses power line to South Sudan with China’s Sinohydro

Published

1 day ago

May 15, 2024

Ifeoluwa Dada

According to the president’s office, Uganda is in negotiations with Sinohydro Corporation Limited of China to build a $180 million power transmission line that would enable Uganda to export electricity to South Sudan, which is severely short on energy.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni received a group led by Vice President of Sinohydro Corporation Yang Yi Xin on Monday as part of the negotiations, according to a late-morning statement from Museveni’s office.

The project, according to the statement, will entail building a new substation and expanding two existing ones in addition to building a 138-kilometre high-voltage transmission line to provide power to South Sudan.

“We are very much willing to help develop this project with the required finance if needed,” Xin was quoted as telling the president.

The statement stated that Museveni endorsed Sinohydro’s proposal to carry out the project. Uganda and South Sudan inked a power sales deal in June of last year, enabling Uganda to sell electricity to South Sudan.

To enable Uganda to export electricity to South Sudan, the two nations inked a power sales deal in June of last year. The Chinese firm is completing a $1.5 billion, 600-megawatt hydropower project on the River Nile in Northern Uganda that is meant to be the source for electricity exports to South Sudan.