THE Democratic Republic of Congo is looking to diversify its critical minerals industry by introducing new operators which will also allow it to improve processes including tax collection.
Bloomberg News quoted Congo’s Mines Minister Kizito Pakabomba as saying the country wants to “attract better investors, more investors and diversified investors”. It recently opposed the sale of Trafigura Group-backed copper and cobalt miner Chemaf Resources Ltd. to China’s Norin Mining.
“We’ve stopped this transaction,” Pakabomba told the newswire in an interview. If Chemaf remains set upon an ownership change, “we’ll consider with them the different options that could be taken,” he said.
Congo’s government has grown increasingly frustrated by its lack of influence over its mining industry, particularly in cobalt, a key ingredient in many electric-vehicle batteries, said Bloomberg.
The country accounted for about three-quarters of global output of the metal last year, but a spike in production by miners in the nation — particularly China’s CMOC Ltd. — has pushed prices to eight-year lows.
As part of this plan, the Congo is looking to joint venture with Saudi Arabia as well as Western companies. It also wants to improve a railway linking its copper and cobalt mines with Angola, thus increasing access to the Atlantic seaboard.
Congo’s foreign minister, Therese Kayikwamba Wagner, told Bloomberg that the country was considering a tender process to rebuild the Congolese side of the railway. “I think that there are a lot of companies that are already lining up” with the project in mind, she said.
The rail-improvement project would cost $245m over the first two years of construction, Pakabomba said. “It will allow us to diversify the different export routes so that we are not only toward the East,” he said.
