Finance minister Mthuli Ncube has reversed plans to double the gold royalty rate to 10 percent, a new 2026 budget bill showed on Wednesday, following protests by miners and industry groups.
A royalty rate of 5 percent would continue to apply for gold prices between $1,200 and $5,000 per ounce, according to the revised budget bill, which was approved by the National Assembly in the early hours of Wednesday following lengthy debate.
“I’ve been persuaded by contributions from MPs and the public,” Ncube said. “We also received representations from the mining companies and a federation comprising the small scale miners that we need to amend these royalty proposals for gold.
“We should accept though that we have a situation of arbitrage. We think that as much as 50 percent of the gold being delivered by small scale producers is actually from large scale producers because they realise that there is a lower royalty, and they make arrangements to deliver through the small scale mines. Of course we are happy that gold is being delivered, but this arbitrage is a source of discomfort.”
In his budget speech last month, Ncube had proposed doubling the gold royalty rate to 10 percent for gold sold above $2,501 an ounce.
During the late-night budget debate, however, he told lawmakers that a 10 percent royalty rate would now only apply if the bullion price topped $5,000 an ounce.
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Small-scale miners would continue to pay lower royalty rates of up to 2 percent, he added.
Large-scale miners such as Caledonia Mining Plc have warned that the proposed royalty hike would impact profitability at its 80,000 ounce-per-year Blanket mine in Gwanda.
Caledonia said the royalty increase and other changes to Zimbabwe’s fiscal regime would also undermine plans to develop its $500 million Bilboes project, which is set to be Zimbabwe’s biggest gold mine.
Zimbabwe produced 42 metric tons of gold in the 11 months to November 2025, a new peak, outpacing the previous record of 37 metric tons in 2024.
Industry groups had warned that the government’s royalty hike would hurt efforts to attract investment and reposition Zimbabwe among Africa’s top gold producers, while also fuelling illicit gold trade.