Posted by kerosi.com at 17:20 pm
During the sidelines of the mining industry conference, Cabinet Secretary Dan Kazungu told media houses that the Ministry of Mining is planning to award a contract to a company to carry out survey to map minerals in the country.
In Financial Year 2016/2017, the National Treasury allocated Ksh. 3 billion for this project. In the past Kenya has discovered deposits of coal, titanium and gold and it is believed to hold significant amounts of rare earth metals, copper, manganese and niobium.
The Ministry of Mining was created by His Excellence Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013 to create diversity in Kenya’s economy. It’s hoped that this will help stop dependence on tourism and agriculture.
He revealed that the Ministry is planning to hire an expert in the next one month to help the contractor conduct Kenya’s first survey of such nature.
The survey will commence from Western Kenya where gold deposits have been discovered. During the previous governments, the mineral explorers were discouraged by lack of proper legal and physical frameworks.
In May 2016, the President Uhuru Kenyatta signed into law the Mining Act 2016 which describes how various stakeholders will share the proceeds from mining activities. The communities in the mining area will receive 10% of the total proceeds, counties get 20% and national government receive 70% of the proceeds.
The law sets the royalties for various minerals at 6 per cent. Miners who will be processing minerals locally, pay a lower rate. The first export of minerals from Kenya was made on February, 2014 by Base Titanium. This is a Multi-National Company which is operating the first large scale mining project in Kenya.
Base Titanium is a unit of Base Resources. Its project in Kenya is worth USD$305 million. These are the initial stages in expanding Kenya’s mining industry.
