Zimbabwe: Anjin cuts 190 diamond jobs

Published Dec 12, 2013

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ZIMBABWE

Anjin cuts 190 diamond jobs

Anjin Investments, which mines diamonds in Zimbabwe’s eastern Marange fields, would fire almost a quarter of its 845-strong workforce because of falling prices and as it switched to underground operations, the company said yesterday. “The slump in mineral price is the main reason” for cutting 190 jobs, director Munyaradzi Machacha said. “The other issue is we are moving away from alluvial mining” to more expensive underground operations. Machacha would not disclose Anjin’s sale prices, citing a confidentiality policy. The Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, which jointly owns the mine with Anjin of China, has five ventures in the Marange fields. The parastatal planned to sell diamonds from these mines in Belgium before next Friday or next month, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre said this week, after the EU ended sanctions against it. – Bloomberg

GHANA

Inflation rate rises to 13.2%

Ghana’s annual consumer inflation rate rose to 13.2 percent last month, the highest level since March 2010, the nation’s statistics office said yesterday. The rise, up slightly from 13.1 percent in October, pushes inflation even further outside the top-end target of 11 percent that was initially set for the year. The government had previously said it was likely to overshoot. Baah Wadieh, an official at the statistical service, said non-food inflation – including housing, water, electricity, gas, fuel and transport – was the main driver, rising 17.6 percent for the month. – Reuters

EAST AFRICA

Pay system to cut bottlenecks

East Africa’s biggest economies had launched a real-time cross-border payments system designed to remove bottlenecks to business and bolster intra-regional trade, Kenya’s central bank said yesterday. The East African Payments System (EAPS) is an early step towards the creation of a monetary union in the five-nation East African Community (EAC), which members hope to create within 10 years. “EAPS is a quick win for the EAC,” the Central Bank of Kenya said. People in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania will be able to make and receive payments in real time. Rwanda and Burundi will join later. – Reuters

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