PROVINCES in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were doing a roaring trade in illegal gold smuggling, according to Reuters which cited a report by the United Nations.
The DRC’s North Kivu, South Kivu and Ituri provinces reported official production of just over 60kg of artisanal gold in 2019, yet exported a total of just over 73kg, the UN Group of Experts on the Congo found in its annual report.
“The country remained one of the Great Lakes region’s largest artisanal gold producers, and yet one of its smallest official exporters,” the Group of Experts wrote.
The gold is channelled through possible “staging posts” in the DRC’s eastern neighbours such as Uganda, the report said. Gold smuggled in this way provides funds for warring rebel fighters and leads to tax losses for the DRC’s ficus: an estimated $1.88m in taxes is estimated to have been lost from smuggled gold from the DRC’s Ituri province in 2019.
Across all gold-producing provinces the loss is likely much greater, said Reuters. Artisanal miners in Congo produce 15 to 22 tons of gold a year, the newswire said citing Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources has estimated.
Asked by Reuters about the report, the DRC’s mines minister, Willy Kitobo Samsoni, said he could not immediately share his figures on mineral smuggling from the east of the country.
Uganda’s gold exports more than doubled in 2019 compared with the previous year, central bank data showed in March. Reuters said Uganda’s energy minister did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Smugglers told the Group of Experts that Kampala was a main trading hub for gold from Ituri. Smuggled gold from South Kivu went to Burundi, Rwanda, the United Arab Emirates, and Tanzania, the UN report added.
