Highly qualified Bill McKechnie was passionately involved with exploration in South Africa earlier. He mentioned that South Africa unquestionably has the endowment in many areas. McKechnie further expressed that the tiny 0.93% of total global exploration expenditure that is coming to South Africa this year, although $4-million of it, fascinatingly, is for grassroots exploration into lithium, “which is one of the new battery revolution minerals coming through”.
McKechnie pointed out, only 16% of the $77.4-million is going into grassroots exploration. If one looks at world global exploration, there’s $8.3-billion planned to be spent on global exploration throughout the world in 2021, and only less than 1% – 0.93% – of that is coming to South Africa.
The geology that describes major South African geologies like manganese, platinum and Witwatersrand gold deposits is well defined.
South Africa holds a projected R35 trillion worth of mineral resources, which are yet to be exploited. Despite this mineral wealth, the country has in current years have not attracted adequate investment to allow for new mines to be unlocked or for sizeable exploration campaigns to be carried out.
2021 budget tabled by the finance minister of South Africa recently postulated that mining was the only sector that grew in revenue by 40% in the financial year. Additionally, royalties were up by 21%. It is reported that South Africa is looking to invest R7 billion in new projects by the end of 2022.
