China-Congo deal to yield first copper this year
A joint venture between the Democratic Republic of Congo's state miner and two Chinese companies, signed under a 2009 "minerals for infrastructure" deal, will begin producing copper this year, Congo's government said on Thursday.
Under the deal, Chinese companies pledged to build US$3 billion worth of roads, railways, schools and hospitals in return for a 68 per cent stake in a joint venture operating copper plants with state miner Gecamines in the country's southern province of Katanga.
The Chinese firms involved in the Sicomines joint venture are Sinohydro and China Railway Group.
The Congolese government office charged with overseeing implementation of the deal said copper output would begin this autumn at a rate of 50,000 tonnes a year, rising to an expected 400,000 tonnes a year over the next two decades.
"This mutually beneficial cooperation with our Chinese partners is a strong example for others interested in investment opportunities in [Congo]," the executive secretary of the office, Moise Ekanga, said.
An original US$9 billion deal signed in 2007 was reduced to about US$6 billion after the International Monetary Fund objected to the amount of debt Congo was taking on.
Ekanga led a tour of the Sicomines plants last weekend by the IMF's resident representative in Congo, the World Bank's country director and foreign diplomats.
Congo, which vies with Zambia to be Africa's top copper producer, extracted more than 1 million tonnes of the metal for the first time last year.
The mining sector helped power economic growth of 9.5 per cent last year, according to the government.
