On Friday, the 6th of March 2020, Zambia’s two-decade old mining company, ZCCM Investments Holdings, 77.7 per cent owned by the Zambian Government, had issued a statement saying that the Zambia’s investment wing had begun to purchase gold from unofficial traders or miners alongside small-scale unregulated miners aimed at formalizing the largely unregulated sector, demand of which has inflated by many folds over the recent past in line with a soaring gold futures’ prices reigning near their nearly seven-year peak.

In point of fact, latest announcement from ZCCM came against a chaotic backdrop in the informal gold mining industry in Africa, while a number of Government across the African continent had been scuffling to deal with unofficial mining of golds, which has also been triggering a number of tormenting issues such as a significant level of environmental risk and health hazards to the miners alongside an en masse flow of illicit money that has been curbing out critical revenues of the nations after having smuggled for sales.

Meanwhile, as Ethiopian artisanal gold buying market has been purchasing the precious metal at a higher price than the markets are offering to lure miners away from black markets, adding that the artisanal gold miners could bring in illegal or unofficially mined gold in to its Lusaka office, ZCCM-IH said in an advertisement on Friday (March 6th), “ZCCM-IH is providing an open market and competitive prices for gold. Looking forward to doing business with you! It is cash on delivery, spread the word! ”

Source: Financial Word