Business community urged to form consortiums to buy BCL
Onalenna Kelebeile | Friday October 21, 2016 16:58
BB, which has appointed a task team to look into the BCL and Tati Nickel mines and suggest the way forward, held consultations with the local business community and other stakeholders.
Mosienyane said if government cannot inject funds into BCL operations so that it continue running, then the business community must come in and tender for the mine as a long-term strategy.
He added that they believe that the smelter and other BCL shafts are still economically viable and they will make sure that those are salvaged for the good of the Selebi-Phikwe region.
“We do not want capital flights and the worst thing that can happen to Selebi-Phikwe is for the business community to give up. Instead, look at things that can be done for the local economy,” he said.
He further noted that SPEDU as a private company should not handle itself as a government department and said they want the agency to be their member.
“We want to have members of Business Botswana to sit in the SPEDU board. We want people with the necessary expertise and those passionate about the region to be board members,” he said.
Botswana Chamber of Mines CEO, Charles Siwawa said the town is in an undesirable situation considering that businesses have a symbiotic relationship with the mine hence they will be greatly affected.
He said the BCL closure is as a result of commodity prices falling by over 50% while costs remained the same and the fact that other mine shafts were expensive to run.
He added that in Botswana, for the past 24 months base metal mines were greatly affected by the slump in commodity prices leading to closure of mining companies such as Discovery Metals and African Copper.
He said there was need for the mines to sit at the bottom of the cost curve so they can be able to sustain operations.
“BCL group still remain a viable and profitable business but it needs somebody to inject capital in the operations until commodity prices recover and enable the mine to restructure and sit at the bottom curve. That was not done hence liquidation,” he said.
Siwawa added that entities need to have reserves to cushion themselves for situations of economic meltdown.
He added that Polaris II strategy was necessary and a viable move to augment and buttress the performance of BCL as a business entity.
“Focusing on the mine alone was not going to be viable,” he said.
For his part BB CEO, Racious Moatshe said they are concerned by the turn of events because Selebi-Phikwe and its region largely depend on the mine hence the broader economy is affected.
He said the Selebi-Phikwe economy is significant in the country’s GDP.
Moatshe said the task team they appointed should come up with a position on BCL in a month’s time.