Copper output rose 12 per cent in 2021, but electricity and water output fell.

By Kanisa Magazine · March 2022

Congo produced 1,797,836 tonnes of copper in 2021, up 12.3 per cent on the year before, and the BCC estimates the economy grew 5.7 per cent after 1.7 per cent in 2020. The same provisional tables in the Banque Centrale du Congo’s digest of 30 March 2022 show something less comfortable beneath the mining line: electricity output fell 2.8 per cent and potable water 11.1 per cent.

The mining headline is real, and so is the second story. Cocoa and palm oil exports are growing from small bases, cement and port traffic are edging up, and the utilities every factory depends on are going the wrong way. The next stretch of non-mining growth is bounded by the grid, not by demand.

What the output tables show

Copper and cobalt grew in volume, but cocoa and palm oil grew faster from a low base.

Cobalt reached 93,011 tonnes in 2021, 7.4 per cent above 2020. Exported palm oil jumped from 16,377 to 46,975 tonnes, almost three times as much, and cocoa from 38,492 to 58,238 tonnes, up 51 per cent and more than ten times the 5,148 tonnes of 2017. Cement output rose to 1,428,137 tonnes from 1,284,917, and port handling at Kinshasa, Matadi and Boma reached 1,878,000 tonnes against 1,832,000. Wheat flour milling edged up 5.1 per cent to 204,936 tonnes.

Not everything climbed. Coffee exports slipped 9.2 per cent to 12,683 tonnes and rubber fell from 6,843 to 5,582 tonnes. Timber logs dropped from 250,133 to 106,977 cubic metres, a fall of 57 per cent.

Where the mining money does and does not go

Mining pays in dollars and employs few; the wider economy waits for the receipts to circulate.

Copper and cobalt receipts reach the economy through the state’s budget and the BCC’s purchases of mining revenue in dollars, a channel the World Bank’s December 2021 ENCORE project of US$250 million targets with a single treasury account and tighter oversight of public revenue. The BCC’s estimate puts GDP at US$52.3 billion for 2021 and GDP per head at US$567.7 at current prices, in a population of 92.2 million. Even with 1.8 million tonnes of copper, income per head is a few hundred dollars a year, which is the plainest sign that volumes in the mines have not yet become incomes across the country.

The January 2022 numbers show the mining base shifting. Copper output was 121,955 tonnes against 130,508 a year earlier and cobalt 6,498 against 7,383, down 6.6 and 12.0 per cent, while gold rose from 624 to 1,749 kilograms and cocoa from 496 to 4,853 tonnes. Those are provisional, one-month figures, so they say little about the year but a good deal about volatility in a sector with few producers.

The constraint under the headline

Power and water are shrinking just as the export crops and cement ask for more.

Electricity production was 12,053 thousand megawatt-hours in 2021 against 12,397 the year before, and potable water 262.1 million cubic metres against 294.9. Power output has grown from 9,457 thousand MWh in 2017, a gain of 27 per cent over four years, while palm oil, cocoa and cement have each moved faster. A palm-oil press, a cocoa fermentation yard and a cement kiln all need dependable power.

The pattern is useful to an investor. Non-mining growth is happening in agri-exports, building materials and port logistics, sectors that sell for dollars or build with them. It is limited less by lack of customers than by lack of electricity, water and transport links.

What a business should do with the pattern

Back processors that bring their own power, and treat port volume as the cheapest leading indicator.

Processors in palm oil, cocoa and cement that carry their own generation, solar or hybrid, will outgrow those who depend on the grid. Port throughput at Kinshasa, Matadi and Boma, which the BCC reports in its activity tables, gives an early read on import-led demand. A firm planning capacity in non-mining Congo should size its power first and its output second, and expect the grid to remain the slowest-growing input.