Congo To Fast Track Mining Contracts Review -Minister5 Feb...

Congo To Fast Track Mining Contracts Review -Minister

5 Feb 2008
Source: Dow Jones Commodities Service


LONDON (Dow Jones)--Congo's government is to fast track a review of the country's mining licenses after a commission found that not one license was "properly constituted," Congo's vice-minister of mines said Tuesday.

"We intend to institute a brief and open administrative appeal process, to a specially constituted panel, through which a company can present its case for reclassification, while minimizing confrontation and shortening any delay to renegotiation," Victor Kasongo told the Mining Indaba conference in South Africa.

The review was initially expected to have been completed by the end of last year.

However, Kasongo said that the scale of the problems associated with the granting of the country's mining licenses had caught the government by surprise.

"We had expected to be able to concentrate our efforts on rectification of a few contracts," he said. "What was meant to be a minor corrective has turned out to be multiple, major surgery," Kasongo added.

Attention is focused on those licenses issued between 1996 and 2005. A leaked report published in November on the Web site of a Kinshasa-based newspaper recommended that 38 contracts be amended, and 23 contracts be canceled entirely. The leaked report said First Quantum Minerals (FM.T) and Anvil Mining (AVM.T) have projects among the cancelations, while Nikanor PLC (NKR.LN), Katanga Mining Ltd. (KAT.T), Lundin Mining (LUN.T) and AngloGold Ashanti (AU) would face amendments to their contracts. Company share prices suffered at the time as a result.