- The opaqueness surrounding China’s engagement in the Congolese extractive sector hopefully will be dispelled by the report by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) to be published this month.
- The mining contract between China and the Democratic Republic of Congo is more than a decade old.
- Even after the renegotiated mining contract with the Chinese, the contract was not transparent.
The opaqueness surrounding China’s engagement in the Congolese extractive sector hopefully will be dispelled by the report by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) to be published this month. The mining contract between China and the Democratic Republic of Congo is more than a decade old. Even after the renegotiated mining contract with the Chinese, the contract was not transparent. Its preliminary version was praised by local experts for exposing several aspects of the contract.
When DRC signed the contract with Sicomines SA, the Chinese firm in 2008, the deal, was worth about $9 billion. However, after the International Monetary Fund intervened, Kinshasa renegotiated the deal . Still It appeared to be skewed.
The preliminary report revealed that while despite DRC providing most of the mining assets of the joint venture, it only had 32 percent of the shares. Over and above, the Chinese feasibility study reportedly undervalued the reserves of these deposits. It was alleged that the contract had been renegotiated in 2017, even without involving the minister in charge of mines before the former President Joseph Kabila left office.
Further it was found that despite pledging $3 billion to build local infrastructures such as roads, schools and health centres by the investors most of them did not see the light of the day, and only less than $1 billion were disbursed.
In July, Congolese Minister for Mines Antoinette Nsamba stated that to date, Sicomines has not paid any tax or royalty and yet exports minerals and imports equipment and operating products free of charge.
Chinese officials refuted the allegations in a published statement claiming that there was consensus between the two Chinese and Congolese parties and that only a small part of profits was to be distributed as most of it was used to repay loans. President Félix Tshisekedi has ordered an adequate assessment by the Minister of State in charge of Infrastructure and by the Minister for Mines.
