Zimplats is in talks with the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority (Zimra) to pay at least $33,8 million in outstanding tax owed to government, but says this could slow down its expansion programme.
Report by Bernard Mpofu
The company yesterday announced that it had agreed with the tax collector to recalculate the tax accrued between 2001 and 2011 following a dispute.
At issue, the company said, was the claiming of capital expenditure in full in he year incurred as provided for in the written undertakings that were issued by Government in 2001, rather than over four years as prescribed in the tax legislation.
“The company has applied these culculations in good faith over the period in accordance with the original undertaking, but accept that in the absence of the government promulgating the relevant legislation as it undertook to do, Zimplats is liable to pay the additional principal tax,” Zimplats chief executive officer Alex Mhembere said in a statement.
He said the miner had engaged an independent firm “of tax experts to audit our tax compliances”.
Zimplats, a unit of South Africa’s Impala Platinum, is a platinum group metals mining company that currently operates three underground mines and a concentrator at Ngezi as well as the Selous Mellurgical Complex, which comprises a concentrator and a smelter.
Mhembere told NewsDay that although the payment to Zimra would not affect production in the current calendar year, the obligations would, however, affect the mines expansion programme.
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“We are in discussions with them in terms of the payment plan . . . It will certainly not affect our productions plans this year, but will obviously affect our growth plans and expansion projects that we are doing.
“We have to postpone some work we are carrying out, but we will not abandon the projects,” he said.
