Back in 2011 ARMZ had obtained 100% of shares of Australian Mantra Resources Pty, however the permission to start the key project implementation, which was Mkuju River in Tanzania with its raw material deposits about 45,500 tons of uranium, was granted only these days. The government of the country had had some special demands to subsoil users which ARMZ had to correspond.

Share with the Government
The Mining Act, adopted in 2010 in Tanzania, secured the right of the state to the free carried interest, which meant that the owner had all the rights of a share-holder but didn’t have to pay the ownership. ARMZ agreed that the relationship with the Tanzanian side had to be partners-like, however, with all the financial flows taken into consideration. Those were: customs, ecological issues, royalty, profit tax, income and corporate tax and so on.

Vadim Zhivov, Chairman of ARMZ Board of Directors said, that the company finally managed to explain to Tanzania that the adder fees shouldn’t make a project uncompetitive. As a result, handing the part of the profit from Mkuju River to the Tanzanian government, ARMZ will get some tax advantages in return. Besides, ARMZ took some additional obligations for ordering preferences among Tanzanian suppliers, employing local personnel and financing police for fighting poachers in the Selous national reserve nearby, with the sum up to $1 million a year.

Real Break-Through
Vadim Zhivov called the obtained mining license, which is the first uranium mining license granted at the territory of the United Republic of Tanzania, a real break-through and a “direct result of a two year harmonious work at all levels”. Mkuju River is the first project with its permission documentation prepared in accordance with the new law of Tanzania in terms of extraction of commercial minerals. “The completion of this process and the beginning of construction of the enterprise will be an important milestone both for Rosatom and for the country’s government” – noted Zhivov.

Mkuju River in Tanzania will be an uranium-mining enterprise with the capacity of 1,400 tons a year with the growing prospective up to 2,500 tons a year with the mining prime cost no less than $80 per kilo. “The Mkuju River minerals are lying in soft sandstones, which means that blast hole drilling is not needed. Figuratively speaking, you can dig uranium with a spade” – says the ARMZ Top Manager.