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JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The key to the development of South Africa lay in mineral beneficiation and industrialisation in joint development with its regional neighbours, South Africa’s new Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene told the Centre for Education In Economics and Finance (CEEF).
Speaking at a CEEF dinner in Johannesburg on Thursday evening, Nene said value addition, industrialisation and regional integration were linked to rapid, sustained economic growth in modern economic development, which was a critical reason why the South African government was placing greater emphasis on them.
Resource-endowed countries that had failed to move up the value chain had registered short bursts of growth, but never the kind of relentless growth that had persisted over decades and resulted in intergenerational wealth creation and the reduction of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
He suggested that South Africa’s vast $2.5-trillion nonenergy mineral endowment could be more adequately leveraged within South Africa’s Cabinet-approved beneficiation strategy, which targeted adding value to the country’s gold, platinum, diamonds, iron-ore, chromium, manganese, vanadium, nickel and titanium, energy coal and uranium endowments.