Provisional BCC figures show non-mining sectors expanding at the pace of the mines or faster.

By Kanisa Magazine · January 2022

Copper tonnage grabs the headlines, but in 2021 it was not the fastest-growing line in the Banque Centrale du Congo’s own activity table. Provisional figures put copper output up 18.4 per cent, while cement rose 25.4 per cent, mobile telephony 25.5 per cent and wheat flour 23.3 per cent. The part of the economy that sells to Congolese households and builders is growing at the pace of the mines or faster.

That matters because the BCC’s estimate of 2021 growth, 5.7 per cent, is usually read as a mining number. The same weekly digest shows a broader recovery: power, ports, beverages and telecoms all grew by double digits. The January picture is of a mining economy with a real, if narrower, domestic economy growing beside it.

The table behind the headline

Seven non-mining indicators grew by between 14 and 26 per cent in 2021, against 18 per cent for copper.

From 2020 to 2021 the provisional table records electricity up 14.5 per cent to 14.2 million megawatt-hours, port handling up 19.9 per cent to 2.2 million tonnes, alcoholic drinks up 20.7 per cent, soft drinks up 17.4 per cent and water up 5.5 per cent. Cobalt rose 13.7 per cent. Nominal output was put at 105.0 trillion francs, about US$52.3 billion, or US$568.5 a head. None of these lines needs a mine to be profitable.

Telephony is the clearest case. The digest counts call minutes consumed, and the 2021 total reached 16,383 million, against 13,049 million in 2020. Wheat flour output rose from 194,945 tonnes to 240,366 tonnes, a gain of about 45,000 tonnes in a product that Congolese bakers sell daily in francs. Cement went from 1.28 million tonnes to 1.61 million, the sort of jump that shows up in construction sites long before it shows up in a national account.

Mechanism: why the domestic sectors keep pace

Mining pays wages, royalties and local suppliers in francs and dollars, and that money buys cement, beer and airtime.

The World Bank’s partnership framework says copper and cobalt exceed 80 per cent of exports, yet domestic revenue is only about 10 per cent of GDP. The export dollars come in through a handful of operators, but they circulate through payrolls, contractors and taxes. A rising copper price lifts spending power before it lifts any non-mining capacity, so sectors with spare plant, such as cement and brewing, respond first. The framework also expects telecoms and transport to support medium-term growth, with only 43 per cent mobile phone penetration leaving room to run.

Where the limits sit

Agriculture is still about a fifth of GDP and employs most Congolese, so the domestic economy is wider than its industrial indicators.

The same document puts agriculture at roughly 20 per cent of GDP and 70 to 75 per cent of employment, with growth projected at only 2.8 per cent in 2021. The BCC’s provisional timber figure shows the opposite risk: log output fell from 250,133 cubic metres to 161,484. A table in which cement jumps and logs fall is a reminder that growth is uneven, and that the IMF-backed programme approved on 15 July 2021 is premised on broadening the tax base because the mines alone cannot carry public spending.

Another caution is data quality. The 2021 column is marked provisional, and the BCC’s own growth estimate rests on production recorded to the end of September. A reader should treat the ranking of sectors as reliable in direction and loose in decimals, and should expect revisions once the full-year figures arrive.

The so-what for supply chains

Back the sectors that sell to the domestic market and track them on the BCC’s own table, not on copper alone.

A producer of building materials, packaged food or data services is selling into a market that expanded by a fifth in a year. The risk is that spending depends on mining receipts, so the sensible plan is to hold plant capacity ahead of copper-price peaks and to price in francs only where input costs are also in francs. Investors comparing Congo with other African markets should read the cement, power and telecom rows first. Those lines show whether the copper windfall is turning into a second engine, and January’s figures suggest it is.