Johannesburg - Impala Platinum (Implats), the second-largest platinum producer in the world, hopes "the problems of perception" the platinum industry has with the Zimbabwe government will be resolved in February next year.
David Brown, Implats' financial director, said Implats met Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank governor, Gideon Gono, on Tuesday following an announcement in October that offshore bank accounts for the platinum industry would be rescinded.
Brown said there "is a perception that the platinum industry has not been transparent about where the money which is being generated is being used".
He said the Reserve Bank believed that by making the platinum industry move its offshore accounts onshore it would have access to more foreign currency.
Brown said the company had had to explain that its subsidiary, Zimplats - of which it owns 83 percent, was in an expansionary phase.
This meant there was not a whole lot of money which was sloshing around in an offshore bank account.
"We are providing monthly reconciliations showing where all of the money has gone," Brown said.
He said that the problems the company was experiencing with the Zimbabwe government were largely due to the Zimbabwe government having a poor understanding of platinum marketing and economics of platinum.
"We have explained and coached them to understand the industry ... We are still one of the major investors in that country, they are aware of this and they would like us to continue to be so. So would we," he said.
Leon Esterhuizen, a precious metals analyst with Investec Securities, said without Zimbabwe in Implats' growth portfolio it would be back to square one for the company, where it would trade at a discount to Angloplat, the world's largest platinum producer, as it had done before getting into Zimbabwe in the late 1990s.
He said the quality of the Zimbabwe ore body and the relative affordability of the open pit and shallow mining made it more attractive than the Eastern Limb of the Bushveld complex in South Africa, which was a poorer-quality ore body.
"You can always fix Zimbabwe, but you can't fix an ore body," he said, adding: "Implats have the ace of spades if they can sort out the problems in Zimbabwe."
Zimbabwe accounted for less than 10 percent of Implats' production, Esterhuizen said, but this was where long-term growth potential lay: "It's a crucial growth platform for them."
On Zimbabwe's empowerment programme, called "indigenisation", Brown said Implats would prefer to have the same equity levels as those in South Africa.
South Africa's target is to have 26 percent of a company in black hands within 10 years, while Zimbabwe's is higher at 30 percent.
Brown said that finding funding for empowerment deals in South Africa was tough, but in Zimbabwe it was even harder.
He said one of the other drawbacks was that every time the company went to the market to raise money there was the risk that its empowerment or indigenous partners would be diluted below the legislated thresholds.
Implats has earmarked R4.7 billion to be spent on investments in Zimbabwe between now and 2009, but has said it would not go ahead until there was an accord reached between South Africa and Zimbabwe which protected South African investments there.
Implats gained R12 to close at R517 on the JSE Securities Exchange yesterday. The platinum sector gained 1.4 percent.