South Africa minister sees possibility of avoiding Amplats job cuts

PRETORIA (Reuters) - South Africa's mining minister Susan Shabangu said on Tuesday it was possible to avoid job cuts at Anglo American Platinum.. The world's top platinum producer, also known as Amplats, said at the end of August it would cut about 4,800 jobs, laying off 3,300 workers and paying off the rest. It will redeploy 1,600 more. "In fact, the latest I am told is about a thousand, so it's quite clear we might even be able to avoid any retrenchments without impacting negatively on the performance of the company," Shabangu said at a presidential briefing. (Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Writing by Jon Herskovitz; editing by David Dolan)