South Africa should replace red tape with ‘smart tape’ to attract much-needed mining investment, Chamber of Mines of South Africa executive for transformation Vusi Mabena said last week.

“If we can reduce the red tape, we can get more than the current level of investment,” Mabena told the twelfth Coaltrans Southern Africa coal conference, at Sun City.

Mabena pleaded for government to invest heavily in rail infrastructure.

“Huge investment is needed into heavy haul,” he said, adding that government was struggling to cope with the damage that road freight was wreaking on road networks.

He praised State rail enterprise Transnet for taking steps to establish dedicated commodity lines to ports.

He urged greater collaboration with government to convert South Africa’s comparative advantage in minerals into a competitive advantage, which required intensive skills development.

It was essential that all parties worked together to restore South Africa as a key mining investment destination and it was crucial that the industry’s stakeholders collaborated to reduce cost pressures and improve multifactor productivity.

“Mining matters for growth,” he said, adding that it was lamentable that the sector had been South Africa’s worst performer over the past two decades and had grown at a level well below that of its peer mining countries.

The chamber was exploring the possi- bility of an emerging miners desk to assist junior miners with a variety of needs.

In 2012, coal had become South Africa’s biggest commodity by sales value, outdoing stricken platinum, with which it had been vying for top spot for the last few years.

Coal sales grew by 9.6% last year to R96-billion, with production volume at 252-million tons a year and the country the world’s fourth-biggest coal exporter.

Coal mining employed 78 000 people and paid salaries and wages totalling R16.1-billion in the period.

Average coal-sector remuneration had grown by 12% a year from 2007 to 2012.

Regrettably, however, because of coal’s success, it was being targeted for declaration by government as a strategic mineral, which could mean that the Minerals Minister would, disappointingly, have a say in its price.