South African Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu announced on Monday that she hoped that amended minerals and mining legislation will be passed by Parliament by the end of the year - amendments intended to address weaknesses in the current legislation, which became apparent during last year.

The Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) had been undertaking a review of the current legislation and the proposed amendments would be presented to Cabinet and, once agreed by Cabinet, set before Parliament. The process was expected to take most of the rest of the year in order to allow time for the widest possible consultation.

The Minister also announced that a new Electronic Mineral Management System (EMMS) was being implemented, to replace the existing National Mineral Promotion System (NMPS). The NMPS was discredited by scandal last year.

Post-scandal investigations of the NMPS revealed a lack of an inherent responsibility system for departmental officials, a lack of transparency in decision-making, “lots” of double-grantings (that is, assigning licences to two different companies for the same property), and overlaps of prospecting and/or mining rights.

As a result, the DMR decided to introduce the EMMS, which was likely to be operational next month. It would allow for the online registration of prospecting and mining licence applications and the online monitoring of the approvals process.

The workflow would follow prescribed and standardised processes, and all applications would have to comply with prescribed and standardised formats, with all supporting documentation also having to be uploaded in a prescribed and standardised manner.

The new approach was based on a Geographic Information System, which included data on, for example, environmentally sensitive areas, to prevent the granting of licences covering such regions.

Each company using the EMMS would have its own log-in details and password and the system would have "four tiers" of security.