![](\"http:\/\/demo6.aiwalls.com\/imgs\/finanec2lims\/0413\/oqcvug1mjhl.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Image supplied by Sibanye Stillwater<\/p>\n
As the annual Mining Indaba, the African continent\u2019s premier gathering for the mining industry, kicked off in Cape Town this week, top SA mining executive Neal Froneman was echoing a warning issued last year that he would rather invest in West Africa, Australia or the Americas due to a lack of local growth opportunities.<\/p>\n
Froneman, who is the long-serving CEO of Sibanye-Stillwater, said poor economic growth, excessive government debt and the possible loss of the Moody\u2019s investment-grade credit rating made doing business in South Africa increasingly risky.<\/p>\n
Sibanye-Stillwater is the world\u2019s largest primary producer of platinum, the second largest primary producer of palladium and the third largest producer of gold, as well as a significant producer of rhodium.<\/p>\n
South Africa\u2019s economy has gone backward<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThere has been a distinct lack of turnaround; if anything we have gone backward,\u201d Froneman said in an interview with Bloomberg<\/em>. \u201cTo be clear and blunt, he (President Cyril Ramaphosa) also hasn\u2019t made some of the difficult decisions and we are hurtling into a debt trap.\u201d<\/p>\n He urged the government to act in the interests of the country and not to pander to ANC factions.<\/p>\n Froneman said if the company did not see growth opportunities in the country it would need to look elsewhere. This would also impact employment prospects, as Sibanye-Stillwater is SA\u2019s largest private sector employer.<\/p>\n In a separate interview with the Daily Maverick<\/em>, he noted that while mining companies want to generate their own power, Eskom needed to be repaired as well. \u201cWe have to make Eskom work. Business and Eskom are joined at the hip; if Eskom fails we are all going to fail,\u201d Froneman stated.<\/p>\n President Ramaphosa may be running out of time<\/strong><\/p>\n The comments highlight the reality that President Ramaphosa and his government may be running out if time to introduce the necessary reforms required to reinvigorate the South African mining sector, which is battling a range of challenges ranging from power shortages to regulatory uncertainty. <\/p>\n Speaking at a media round table in November last year, the Sibanye-Stillwater CEO also emphasised the he believed critical issues were not being addressed, both within the mining sector and the economy in general.<\/p>\n Land expropriation and mining charter are not business friendly<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cYou can\u2019t use the word \u2018expropriation\u2019 in the same sentence as \u2018business friendly\u2019,\u201d he said, referring to a push from within the ANC to amend the constitution to allow for expropriation of land without compensation.<\/p>\n He also criticised the Labour Relations Act as being outdated and inefficient, and said the latest iteration of the mining charter, while improved, was still not sufficiently business friendly.<\/p>\n In a statement released in late January, Moody\u2019s Investors Service said it was \u201ca bit early\u201d to judge the government\u2019s policy and structural reforms after changing its outlook on the country\u2019s credit ratings to negative almost three months ago.<\/p>\n Ends<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Image supplied by Sibanye Stillwater As the annual Mining Indaba, the African continent\u2019s premier gathering…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1454,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164,162,161,163,41],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-greener","tag-largest","tag-mining","tag-pastures","tag-sa"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03.jpg",1200,858,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03-300x215.jpg",300,215,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03-768x549.jpg",640,458,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03-1024x732.jpg",640,458,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03.jpg",1200,858,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03.jpg",1200,858,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03-1024x732.jpg",1024,732,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/1658\/8362e214d4c1c03-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Business<\/a>","tag_info":"Business","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}