By Tawanda Musarurwa

HARARE -Hwange Colliery Company says it plans to commence beneficiation of its main coal product into sev-eral value added products, managing director Mr Thomas Makore has said.

Mr Makore said the benefici-ation plans will significantly benefit Zimbabwe's energy sector.

"As part of our own ZimAsset contribution we want to ben-eficiate coal into a final prod-uct and the final product can either be coal or coke peas, nuts and cobbles, or it can be electricity. Now when you con-vert coal into electricity that is value addition because we

use electricity in our homes and we use electricity in our

industries. "So when we sell coal yes we are selling it as a final product

News Update as @ 1530 hours, Friday 12 February 2016Feedback: bh24admin@zimpapers.co.zwEmail: bh24feedback@zimpapers.co.zw

Hwange eyes coal beneficiation, value addition

and better still it can be sold as electricity," he said speak-ing at a ZimAsset Conference this afternoon.

Currently, almost all the raw coal mined in the country is used internally, after the product has been beneficiated to levels required by the cur-rent targeted user.

He said the company was cur-rently in the process of look-ing into producing coal-bed and coal-mine methane.

"In terms of specific areas that we are doing projects in line with value addition and in line with ZimAsset we are busy with studies and explora-tion on coal-bed methane and coal-mine methane.

"These gases can be used for domestic cooking gas, and you can also use the same gases to generate power so that's another value addition project that we are looking at.

"We also want to resuscitate our coke oven battery, which

stopped because of age and operational reasons. This coke oven battery allows us to make coke that is used in the steel and ferrochrome indus-try.

"It also produces coke oven gas, which means the boil-ers at ZPC don't have to use diesel to fire up, they can use this gas and therefore they do not have to use diesel and then we get by-products from this coke oven battery such as benthol and tar products, which we supply to ZimChem for the manufacture of paint products," said Mr Makore.

In an earlier study by the Chamber of Mines Zimbabwe, the institution said locally pro-duced coal, with the exception of Hwange coal, is low in value and distances from source to utility or coal energy utilising centres is relatively long.

To this extent said the Cham-ber of Mines "coal consists of fractions of good quality material mixed with mineral impurities and harmful sub-stances like sulphur and mer-cury. This makes it imperative to beneficiate the coal either before delivery to the market or before utilisation.●

2 NEws

Mr Thomas Makore

BH243

HARARE – ASA Resource Group (formerly Mwana Africa) says cost control measures and improved production efficiencies at its operations in Zimbabwe resulted in enhanced production during the third quarter ended December 31 last year.

ASA owns and operates Freda Rebecca Gold Mine and Trojan Nickel Mine in Zimbabwe.

In a production update, ASA chief executive Mr Yat Hoi Ning said both operations registered increased production despite a challenging business environ-ment.

“With the ongoing improvements put in place by management, our businesses are slowly but surely showing good progress on all levels,” he said.

During the quarter, Freda Rebec-ca’s gold sales rose by 2.4 per-cent to 18 506 ounces with the increase being attributed to improvements in feed grade and recoveries.

Cash costs were reduced by 5.6 percent in the quarter under review to $820 per ounce while all-in sustaining costs were reduced by three percent to $988 per ounce.

“We endeavor to continue with our rolling plan at Freda Rebecca, as it continues to yield positive results,” Yat said.

At Trojan, nickel concentrate production increased 10 percent to 1 584 tons while nickel sales grew 5. 6 percent to 1 577 tons at an average net price of $6 121 per ton.

Improved nickel concentrate production was primarily due

to an increase in average head grade and recoveries achieved by mining more of the higher grade ore reserves.

Mr Yat said the New Year also started off well, with results in January promising and encour-aging.

“Trojan had a good start in the year. Despite experiencing a lost week at the start of the month our nickel production was close to the target of 644 tonnes, only short by 33 tons in terms of pro-duction targets.

“It is expected that the call for the last quarter will be met

due primarily to operational improvements which will result in reduced underground power interruptions, resolution of compressed air shortages and increased access to dump trucks, enhancing the development pace and hence increased access to high grade ore,” he said.

“At Freda Rebecca in January 2016 there was an improvement in gold production during the month resulting in 5,769 ounces being produced (Dec 2015 – 5,688 ounces) at an average realized price of $1,109/ ounce.”

Mr Yat said power supply remained a major disruption fac-tor but counter measures were being put in place starting this month.

“In the meantime, our cost con-trol measures shall continue in order to optimise the perfor-mance of the mines. I remain confident that this pattern of steady improvement will persist until operating tar targets are reached,” he said.-New Ziana●

4 NEws

Freda Rebecca and BNC record increased production

BH24

For Durable, Reliable Ofce Equipment

THINK BYCO

RevolvingUnit

WoodenBookcase

LetterTray

CombinationCupboard

Junior Work Station

GalaxyComputer Trolley

72 inch Stationary cupboard

4 DrawerFilling Cabinet

www.byco.co.zw

GalaxyRound TableCash box

WastePaper Bin

Email: sales@byco.co.zw / byco@africaonline.co.zw

5

By Funny Hudzerema

HARARE - Government has started to conducting aware-ness campaigns to promote the installation of solar water heaters in residential areas to mitigate against power short-ages in the country

The programme is expected to see the replacement of elec-tric geysers with solar water heaters. Government is plan-ning to install and retrofit 250 000 solar geysers over the next five years.

In a statement secretary for energy and power develop-

ment Partson Mbiriri said the programme will increase awareness on the advantages of using solar waters heaters.

“Zimbabwe is one of the many southern countries adversely affected by power shortages so much that saving power becomes a priority.

“The awareness team under the national solar water heat-ing programme, comprising of 30 members is planning on charring a door to door cam-paign,” he said.

Studies carried out have shown that 40 percent of elec-tricity consumed in the home goes to water heating.

“If solar water heaters are installed on all houses the saving on electricity con-sumption can be directed to other productive sectors of the economy.

“Research has shown that solar water heaters save money at house hold level, reduce power consumption at national level and are envi-ronmentally friendly,” he said.

National power demand was currently estimated at about 2 200 MW against available generation capacity of around 1 200 MW and installed capac-ity of 1 960 MW.●

6 NEws

Government rolls out solar water heater campaign

BH247

HARARE - The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has licensed the third micro-fi-nance bank (MFB) in the country as it seeks to widen options for the banking public and encourage savings.

The central bank upgraded the license of microfinance insti-tution Collarhedge Finance to an MFB. At the same time last year, the RBZ licensed Afri-can Century Limited as the country’s first ever MFB, after which it l icensed Getbucks Financial Services in August 2015.

“The entrance of more play-ers in the financial sector bodes well for efforts aimed at promoting the deepening of financial markets,” the RBZ said.

The earlier licensed MFBs commenced operations this January while Collarhedge is stil l getting its house in order in line with its new mandate. Licensing of MFBs, which have

less stricter requirements than commercial banks, is expected to improve access to financial services by peo-ple in lower income groups.

The RBZ announced inten-tions to license MFBs in 2013 but there had not been any takers until 2015 as cap-ital constraints prevented MFIs from upgrading their licenses. Micro-finance banks

are required to have a mini-mum capital threshold of $5 million.

Experts in the MFIs sector say some of the institutions are not keen to upgrade their licenses to avoid increased scrutiny by the central bank. According to the apex bank, there were 155 registered MFIs at the end of last year.

MFBs, which are referred to in some countries as “bank-ing for the poor”, are popular and are flourishing in coun-tries such as Nigeria where over 700 are in operation. MFBs are known for being the major players in supporting the informal sector as well as small to medium enterprises, which in the case of Zimba-bwe has become the “new” economy. - New Ziana●

8 NEws

RBZ registers third microfinance bank

HARARE - The local bourse's losses over the week out-weighed the earlier gains as the mainstream industrial index lost 0.83 (or 0,82 per-cent) on a week-on-week basis.

Following today's trades, the industrial index closed the week on a low note following a 0.19 loss to settle at 100.84 as AFDIS lost $0,0200 to trade

at $0,4800 while crocodile skin producer Padenga was $0,0050 weaker at $0,0600.

No counter traded in the posi-tive territory.

But beverages giant Delta, Fidelity Life, Old Mutual and TSL were unchanged at $0,5250, $0,0950, $1,8000 and $0,1350 in that order.

The mining index shed 0.79 to

close at 100.84 after Bindura retreated $0,0010 to trade at $0,0090.

Gold producer Falgold, Hwange and RioZim maintained previ-ous price levels at $0,0050, $0,0300 and $0,1040, respec-tively.

Week-on-week, the mining index retreated 0.79 (or 4,05 percent). - BH24 Reporter ●

ZsE9

Industrial, mining indices close week on a low

Peace of mind is good

www.sc.com/zwRegistered Commercial Bank

A member of the Deposit Protection Corporation

underwritten by

Standard Chartered Bank keeps you covered in more areas than one with our array of Bancassurance products.

To get the optimum home, motor, life, funeral or business cover, get in touch with us today.

MovERs CHANGE TodAy PRiCE UsC sHAKERs CHANGE TodAy PRiCE UsC

BINDuRA -10.00 0.90

PADENGA -7.69 6.00

AFDIS -4.00 48.00

iNdEx PREvioUs TodAy MovE CHANGE

INDuSTRIAL 101.03 100.84 -0.19 points -0.19%

MINING 19.53 18.74 -0.79 POINTS -4.05%

10 ZsE TABlEs

ZsE

iNdiCEs

Stock Exchange

Previous

02 03

ADD TO CARTSave big on selected

Products of your choice

PAYMENTYou can purchase

whenever, wherever using:

DELIVERYSpend $30 or moreon your purchases

and get freedelivery

01 Hello Convenience

www.hammerandtongues.com

BIG CONVENIENCE+BIG SAVINGS+BIG OPPORTUNITIES = BIG HAPPINESS

SHOP ONLINE!!

today

11 diARy oF EvENTs

The black arrow indicate level of load shedding across the country.

PowER GENERATioN sTATs

Gen Station

12 February 2016

Energy

(Megawatts)

Hwange 549 MW

Kariba 285 MW

Harare 19 MW

Munyati 28 MW

Bulawayo 0 MW

Imports 0 - 350 MW

Total 1275 Mw

—18 February 2016 - 70th Annual General Meeting of the members of CAFCA ; Place: Boardroom at the company’s registered office at 54 Lytton Road, Workington, Harare; Time: 12:00 hours

—23 February 2015 - 38th Annual General Meeting of the members of Powerspeed Electrical limited; Place: Powerspeed Board-room, Gate 1, Powerspeed Complex, Corner Cripps Road and Kelvin Road North, Graniteside, Harare; Time: 1100 hours

25 February 2016 - Extraordinary General Meeting (“EGM”) of the Shareholders of Radar Holdings Limited; Place: Tanganyika House, 6th Floor Boardroom, Harare; Time: 0900 hours...

25 February 2016 - The 49th Annual General Meeting of Mashonaland Holdings limited; Place: The Boardroom, 19th Floor, ZB life Towers, 77 Jason Moyo Avenue, Harare; Time: 1200 hours...

26 February 2016 - The Sixty-ninth Annual General Meeting of Ariston Holdings Limited; Place: Ariston Holdings Limited Main Boardroom, 306 Hillside Road, Msasa woodlands, Harare: Time: 14.30 hours:

THE BH24 diARy

JoHANNEsBURG - THE rand was firmer at midday today amid a weaker dollar environ-ment. Investors recently sold the greenback after remarks by uS Federal Reserve chair-woman Janet Yellen that global economic growth con-cerns could result in the Fed’s holding back on further inter-est rate increases this year.

At 11.34am the rand was at 15,7594 against the dol-lar from a previous close of 15,8571.

Against the euro, the rand was at 17,7859 from 17,9284 and was at 22,9153 against the pound from 22,8880 pre-viously.

The euro was at $1,1286 from $1,1321 previously.

TreasuryOne chief currency dealer Wichard Cill iers said the rand staged a strong rally on Thursday before President Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address. However, the rally could have been attrib-uted to Ms Yellen’s conceding that the Fed was evaluating the possibility of negative interest rates, as they would want to be prepared in the

event that it was needed for added accommodation, he said.

"This sounds like doomsday prepping, but if you take a look at the continual slump in global equities, it looks as if markets themselves are starting to price in a sharp slowdown in the global econ-omy and even a recession in the uS," Mr Cill iers said.

Rand and emerging market gains were teetering back and forth. Bad news for the uS weakens the dollar and helps the rand become firmer, but if sentiment gets too neg-ative, risk currencies suffer and the rand gives back all of its gains, Mr Cill iers said.

There is a fine line and the swings are volatile and aggressive, with a 40c spread

between the high and low of the day becoming the new norm.

The rand looked set to defy conventional wisdom on Fri-day and continue to move stronger, despite the worry over the global climate and a lack of credibility follow-ing the state of the nation address, Mr Cill iers said.-BDLive●

REGioNAl NEws 12

Rand firms as dollar weakens

siNGAPoRE — Gold today clung to sharp overnight gains that pushed the metal to a one-year high, and looked set to post its best week in more than four years as stock mar-ket turmoil stoked safe haven demand.

Asian shares slid as mount-ing concern about the health of European banks further threatened a global economic outlook. MSCI’s global stock index closed more than 20 percent below its record high, while safe-haven assets shone across the board.

uS 10-year Treasury yields hit their lowest since 2012 and the yen climbed to its highest in 15 months against the dollar, while money continued to flow into gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Spot gold rose to $1 260,60 on Thursday, its highest in a year, before paring some gains to close up 4 percent in its biggest daily gain in about two-and-a-half years. On Fri-day it eased 0,9 percent to $1 235,85 by 3.35am GMT.

"We are seeing a flight to quality," said a Sydney-based

trader. "ETFs have been accu-mulating the metal for some time now. They are one of the main drivers (of the gold rally) along with the equity markets which are extremely soft."

Assets in SPDR Gold Trust, the world’s top gold ETF, rose 2 percent on Thursday, the biggest inflow in two months. Total holdings of the top

eight gold ETFs have risen by 3,8-million ounces so far this year, after three straight years of decline.

The risk-off sentiment has made gold the best-perform-ing commodity in 2016, ANZ said, while others predicted further gains. Yuichi Ikemizu at Standard Bank in Tokyo said "$1 300 would be possible if

stocks don’t stop falling".

Jeffrey Gundlach, co-founder and CEO of DoubleLine Cap-ital, said gold was likely to reach $1 400 as investors lost faith in central banks. For the week, spot gold is up 5,5 per-cent, the biggest weekly gain since October 2011.

uS gold futures are set to post a gain of nearly 7 percent for the week, the sharpest such jump since 2008.

Also helping gold were dovish comments from uS Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen, who stressed that the uS central bank was not on a "preset" path to return policy to "normal" amid a worsening meltdown in global stock mar-kets.

Though Ms Yellen said she still expected the Fed to gradu-ally raise rates this year, fed-eral funds rate futures have almost completely priced out the chance of a rate hike.

Platinum was down $6,64 or 0,7 percent at $949,85 and palladium lost $2,62 or 0,5 percent to $518,83.-Reu-ters●

iNTERNATioNAl NEws 13

Gold holds strong overnight gains, has biggest weekly rise in more than four years

IKE Hearn, a British computer pro-grammer, holed up in his two-bed-room apartment in Zurich over several days and nights this month, writing a cri de coeur.

Two years ago, Hearn quit a cushy programming job at Google’s Swiss offices to devote himself full time to his great passion: the virtual currency bitcoin.

He was one of a handful of developers in the world dedicated to maintaining the basic software that governs the creation of new bitcoins and the net-work on which the financial transac-tions take place.

But a nasty fight has torn apart the small brotherhood of bitcoin devel-opers and raised questions about the survival of the virtual currency. Hearn, until recently a prominent leader of the bitcoin project, became so disillusioned that in December he sold his last few hundred bitcoins and quietly took a job at a start-up.

HIS impassioned blog post was an announcement that he was leaving: "Bitcoin has gone from being a trans-parent and open community to one that is dominated by rampant cen-sorship and attacks on bitcoiners by

other bitcoiners."

The dispute has exposed fundamen-tal differences about the aims of bitcoin and how online communities should be governed. The two camps have broadly painted each other as, on one side, populists who are focused on expanding bitcoin’s com-mercial potential and, on the other side, elitists who are more concerned with protecting its status as a radical challenger to existing currencies.

In the past six months, the divide has led to death threats against bit-coin developers and hacking attacks that have taken down internet service providers. These internal struggles have surfaced as the bitcoin technol-ogy is gaining credibility. Throughout the controversies that have plagued the virtual currency — including many instances of theft and fraud — the basic software has continued working as expected.

That consistency has pushed the value of all outstanding bitcoins to more than $6bn and led many ven-ture capitalists to imagine the tech-nology as the future of finance, a cheaper and faster way to carry out financial transactions of all sorts.

Part of bitcoin’s appeal has been its promise to provide a more reliable and trustworthy alternative to exist-ing currencies and financial networks. unlike the uS Federal Reserve and Wall Street, institutions managed by humans, bitcoin was supposed to rest on the infallible logic of maths and computer code.

The current dispute, though, is a reminder that the bitcoin software is an evolving product of the human mind, and its deployment is vulnera-ble to human frailties and divergent ideals.

GAVIN Andresen, a close collabora-tor of Hearn’s and one of the long-est-standing contributors to the bitcoin software, says the dispute is likely to cause disruptions in the short term, but he disagrees with the notion that it will damage bitcoin’s long-term prospects.

Other bitcoin leaders express a sim-ilar sentiment, and investors have been inclined to believe them: the price of a bitcoin has risen in recent months, to about $430.

Some of Hearn’s allies hope the dead-lock can be broken if the largest bit-coin companies get behind Bitcoin

Classic, a new version of the basic bitcoin software that was announced this month and that aims to expand the network’s capacity while also introducing new standards of govern-ance.

But Hearn is convinced it is too late.

"It never occurred to me that the thing could just fall apart because of people getting crazy and having fundamental political disagreements over the goals of the project," Hearn says. "It’s really shaken my faith in humanity."

Hearn, 31, grew up in Manchester, England. He was one of the first seri-ous programmers to take an interest in bitcoin, in April 2009, a few months after its mysterious founder, known as Satoshi Nakamoto, let it loose.

Like many of the programmers who took an early interest, Hearn admired the rule-bound nature of the system. Only 21-million bitcoins would ever be created. And the distribution of new bitcoins was clearly laid out, rely-ing on mathematical algorithms that left no room for human meddling.

Satoshi had written the software containing these rules, but after it

14 analysis14 ANAlysis

Bitcoin at risk as developers quarrel over system

15 analysis15 ANAlysis

was released, anyone could see the code and make changes. The peo-ple downloading this open-source software voted on which changes to accept based on which version of the software they chose to use.

If Satoshi proposed changes they didn’t like, they didn’t have to down-load and run it, and anyone could offer an alternative. Bitcoin, like many other open-source projects, was a sort of leaderless democracy — a new way of governing human behaviour online.

Hearn joined a small but growing group of volunteers who worked on the basic bitcoin software — the most committed of whom became known as the core developers. They met in person only a handful of times, but they would chat constantly online and send e-mails discussing potential changes.

The leader of this effort, after Satoshi bowed out in 2011 (without ever revealing a real identity), was uS-based Andresen, who kept every-one on the same page.

THE bonhomie began to fall apart last year because of what appeared to be

a positive development: the continu-ing growth in the number of bitcoin users and transactions.

The problem was that, early on, Satoshi established a limit on the number of transactions that could be processed every 10 minutes. The cap was meant to ensure that the com-puters processing transactions would not be overwhelmed.

But Satoshi had suggested that the limit should be temporary, and as the number of transactions inched closer to the cap, delays started to occur and transactions were not going through.

When Hearn began pushing for changes to the core bitcoin software to allow for larger blocks of trans-action data, he faced resistance. Gregory Maxwell, a largely self-taught programmer who had worked on Wikipedia and the Mozilla web browser, said larger blocks of transac-tion data would be harder for ordinary computers to process. The result, he warned, would be to hand control over the network to big companies that could afford powerful computers.

For Maxwell, slower transactions seemed to be a secondary issue to

protecting bitcoin from centralised sources of authority. Hearn retorted that the technical issue wasn’t such a big deal; ordinary computers could mostly process the larger blocks of data. More important, he argued, was that bitcoin needed to succeed as a cheaper, faster payment network, such as PayPal or Visa.

If bitcoin wanted to compete with mainstream payment systems that could process thousands of trans-actions a second, it would have to do away with its limit of fewer than seven transactions a second.

As the debate grew increasingly frac-tious, friendships among the core developers fell apart. Hearn and Andresen decided last year that the only way forward was to give the vote to the people using the software. They put together a version of the software — largely the same as the current software, but with an allow-ance for more transactions — called Bitcoin XT.

If a clear majority of the system’s users downloaded the software, it would become the new law of the land — what is known in open-source terminology as a fork.

The release of Bitcoin XT was viewed by Maxwell as a betrayal. It was dem-ocratic, but he said decisions about the core software should be made by technical experts — not by populist campaigns.

Maxwell and his supporters tried to engineer a compromise. They organ-ised meetings in Montreal and Hong Kong for leading developers to dis-cuss ways to scale bitcoin. Andresen went to the first, where Maxwell’s allies announced a more gradual plan for increasing network capacity. But Andresen and Hearn felt the recom-mendations didn’t go far enough.

Despite the discord, Hearn has not lost faith in all of the ideas behind bitcoin. The start-up in New York, where he has taken a new job, R3, is developing networks for banks to enable cheaper and faster ways to trade assets of all sorts.

This work lacks the purity of maintain-ing bitcoin, but after months of sleep-less nights, fretting about betrayed promises, Hearn says: "I want to be in a professional environment again where people are grounded in some sort of business reality."-New York Times●