Somehow, Cabinet Ministers seem to say more outside the country than in it. Mining Weekly has been striving for effective stimulation of the dormant exploration business for some time, but the publication had to wait for Minerals Minister Gwede Mantashe to go to last week’s Africa Down Under conference, in Australia, to hear the Minister’s plans.

He seems head over heels about promoting greenfield exploration by junior mining companies. He is not only putting a R20-billion budget their way but also talking about spicing things up for them with tax incentives.

At last, the penny seems to have dropped that exploration is generally incentivised globally unless the outcome of drilling into rich resources is a given.

One caveat we want to put upfront immediately is that all this must be done under the full glare of open publicity, with no more of the dark and deceitful stuff that has characterised the Department of Mineral Resources in recent years.

For some reason best known to the Treasury itself, incentives have been introduced circuitously, to such an extent that the people of South Africa have been unnecessarily deprived of the potential benefit.

Even now, Section 12J of the Income Tax Act remains stock exchange averse.

The Treasury wants the individuals who benefit from the 40% tax break that 12J provides to receive their benefit without anyone knowing that they have.

Yet, the people of Canada have benefited significantly from giving the proven flow-through scheme a Toronto Stock Exchange framework, which makes it transparent and which has supported its effectiveness.

Exactly what the Mineral Resources Minister has in mind when he talks of tax incentives has still to be spelt out, but he is starting to come up trumps in his decision-making, which has already seen the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act Amendment Bill end up in the bin.

Mining Weekly would now like to see the Minister come up with something that can really do the people of South Africa maximum good. It would also be appropriate for Mantashe to persuade his Cabinet colleagues to create a sovereign fund to take in resources windfalls when they arise and have money in the kitty to help South Africa out when things are down and tough, as they are now.

It is a given that resources profits will go up and down and the Norwegian model of putting fortunes on an even keel by creating a sovereign fund is one that has fallen on deaf ears for decades, like most other good recommendations.

But metals and minerals are better left in the ground if they are not going to be mined for maximum national benefit. The wealth is in the ground and the way to benefit all the people of South Africa is to create a legislative framework that extracts that wealth competitively and provides maximum benefit for the many industries that gain from mining.

In that way, the benefits of jobs, taxes and transformation are maximised.