The Minister said that for the next five year period the Department set a number of challenges of which the following were emphasised:

• How the situation is going to change whereby mining becomes more beneficial, especially in the area of creating jobs;
• To diversify the extent to which the profile of minerals are improved;
• Movement away from ownership of mineral rights by the state and private companies to ownership of such rights by the state only;
• Access to finance is a general problem, which the Department will attempt to look into;
• The issue of safety in the mines. The Minister said that the disaster of recent times do not reflect on the poor safety in the industry, investigations will show the cause of these accidents;
• The Department would also like to get a more flexible and structured social plan;
• HIV-AIDS is a major problem in the mines, the Department hopes to call a mining summit to address this problem.

The Minister said that Energy have to be a structured Directorate and in the result more affordable. Before the end of the year negotiations pertaining to the gas pipeline from Mozambique should be concluded. In the area of electrification, the Minister confirmed that both ESKOM and municipalities are involved. For better efficiency steps are in the pipeline to include local municipalities to be responsible for electricity distribution. The Department hopes by September to be actively involved in implementation along these lines. Furthermore the Department will look into increasing the refining capacity of the country, and details would be announced later in the year.

As far as rural development is concerned, the Minister said the Department of Mineral and Energy Affairs plays a leading role to make sure that a better climate is created for economic development and success within this area. The promotion of small scale mining, especially women's involvement, is one of the priorities of the Department. The Minster concluded her presentation by saying that generally it is hoped that there would be effective and faster improvements in the area of Energy.

A major problem faced 5 years ago, according to the Deputy Minister was that the demography of the country was not represented in the Department. Since then there have been improvements on both gender and racial representation. The HIV-AIDS issue was once again raised by the Deputy Minister who said that the Mineral and Energy sector is mostly affected by the disease. She said that the Department managed to put a committee in place to look into the issue of HIV, not only to deal within the Department itself but also to move outside. The mining industry is highly affected by the disease, furthermore the social conditions are adding to the increase of the affect of HIV in this area.

Bills outstanding are the National Nuclear Regulatory Bill and the Nuclear Energy Bill. The Deputy Minister said that it would be very important to try and fast track these Bills and they should be enacted by the end of the year. The Deputy Minister concluded her presentation by saying that both bills are very important to the sector.

The Minister added that the Gold Crisis Committee, as it is known, would undergo a name change. The Proposed name is Mine Development Co-ordinating Committee. The reason being that the Department wants to create a psychology for a long-term response to the very rapid decrease in gold prices and not to be dealt with as a crisis (short term).

Since there were no questions the briefing was closed by the Minister.