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Mining sector in the DRC: what transparency?



In a precarious balance, vilified, even humiliated, President Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo has shown himself to be tenacious.

He was waiting for his spring.

He showed a conciliatory character and wanted to be patient.

He distinguished himself by his high quotient of adversity, that is to say, the ability, according to the Moroccan professor Rachid Boutti, to go through a difficult period in life and to get out of it without losing his head.

It is a quotient that determines who will give up in the face of hazards / troubles, who will abandon the family, who is considering suicide, etc.

The severe judgment recorded on the part, mainly, of the population towards President Félix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo by him indirectly to his father, champion of all categories of the fight for the advent of a democratic State and of law in DRC, is justified on another level.

Indeed, the new master of Mount Ngaliema comes from the opposition and not just any.

He comes from a party that has struggled for 37 years to gain power.

With his accession to power, he was thus given the opportunity to refound the Republic and establish a rule of law, concerned with the well-being of the population.

The UDPS has always placed the interest of the Congolese people and the promotion of social issues as the objective of its entire struggle.

Having become a leitmotif, this priority was constantly trumpeted and summed up by its leader Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, through a pair: "the people first".

Jimmy Munguriek certainly believes that progress has been made but things remain to be corrected: contracts signed in complete opacity, undisclosed transactions, the lack of legal proceedings, he denounces.

The Congo Hold-up investigation revealed, for example, how the BGFI Bank was used to levy a kind of "Kabila tax" from several institutions and public companies such as the national mining company, Gecamines.

Freddy Kasongo, executive secretary of the Observatory for Studies and Support for Social and Environmental Responsibility (OEARSE), denounces, for example, invisible calls for tenders in the context of license allocations over the past ten years:

"We have more contracts which are made public and others which are not so far. We believe that it is important for the government to invest more in greater transparency, particularly at the level of the acquisition of licenses because it is the gateway for investors in the mining sector."

"A mess in the area"

The national coordinator of the EITI estimates at 189 the number of mining contracts discovered and published since 2019.

A few weeks ago, President Félix Tshisekedi ordered the suspension of mining permits.

On the DW, the Congolese Minister of Mines N'Samba Kalambayi recognized the "disorder in this sector", adding that the permits granted or which are in the process of being are not up to standard.

Freddy Kasongo insists on transparency which would ultimately encourage "public debate within the population so that these exhaustible resources can benefit them and the country through development".

From 2018 until the first quarter of 2020, the mining sector would have brought in six and a half billion to the state coffers.

According to the national coordinator of the EITI, the validation process should last until next March.

The results will only be known in the second half of 2022.

Depending on the score of the DRC, the country could be subject to another validation or experience a suspension or even a delisting.