Negotiations between Government and De Beers on the restructuring of Namdeb, effectively giving the State 50 per cent of the interest in all De Beers’s land and sea operations in Namibia, are still ongoing, the international diamond giant has said.
De Beers has held “a long series of negotiations around the future of our diamond mining interests in Namibia”, the company said in an e-mail to Bloomberg on Friday. “These [negotiations] are coming to an end, but we’re not quite there yet,” the e-mail stated.
Locally, Government has been silent on Justice Minister Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana’s memorandum to Cabinet, proposing that a new company, Namdeb Holdings, be created with Namdeb Land and Namdeb Sea as subsidiaries. Government and De Beers will have 50 per cent of the shares each in the new holding company, the Minister suggested in her brief.
http://allafrica.com/stories/201105170571.html
I wonder if we are going to see a tsunami of nationalisation across Namibia and the rest of Africa that may well be as destructive for our Australian uranium companies with African projects as was the recent Japanese event was for Japan’s industries?
