Copper receipts and a policy-made cobalt price both lifted the external account in April, and they differ in durability.

By Kanisa Magazine · April 2025

Congo’s net international reserves stood at US$6,738 million on 25 April 2025, up US$606 million from the end of December, while the price of cobalt, the metal the government had just stopped exporting, was 40 per cent higher than on the last day of 2024. The external account that supports the franc is being built from two different mechanisms: copper receipts that arrive because mines keep shipping, and a cobalt price that rose because Kinshasa chose to ship less.

For a business reader, the point is the difference. One of those supports is volume. The other is policy, and policy can be reviewed.

What the reserves bought

Reserves rose by a tenth in four months and now cover about 11 weeks of imports.

The BCC’s reserve series moved from US$6,132 million on 31 December to US$6,337 million on 31 January, dipped to US$6,046 million on 28 February, and then climbed to US$6,394 million on 31 March and US$6,738 million on 25 April. The central bank rounds import cover to three months; its own weekly line reads 11 weeks. The cover is rising while the franc holds at about CDF 2,855 per dollar.

Reserves are the stock; the flow comes from mining exports. London copper closed at US$8,789 a tonne on 31 December and US$9,351 on 25 April, with an April trough of US$8,985 on 10 April when trade-war fears hit commodity screens. Brent fell from US$74.42 to US$65.74 a barrel over the same period, which cuts Congo’s import bill for refined fuel. Gold, a smaller export but a fast one, rose from US$2,639 to US$3,321 an ounce.

The cobalt experiment

A supply cut by the producer is a price instrument, and the data in April shows it working.

On 22 February the mining regulator ARECOMS suspended cobalt exports for at least four months, with a review after three, according to electrive’s report, which also quotes the stated aim of regulating a market short of balance. The BCC’s London cathode series tells what happened next: US$21,171 a tonne on 28 February, US$26,578 on 31 March and US$33,597 on 25 April. That is a 59 per cent rise in eight weeks, and the move from 31 March to 1 April (US$33,819) looks like the BCC refreshing a stale quote rather than one day’s trade, so the pace matters less than the level.

Congo accounts for roughly three-quarters of intermediate cobalt supply, and CRU, a commodities consultancy, expected the ban to remove no more than 20,000 tonnes a year of capacity against a surplus it put near 50,000 tonnes. CRU also estimated ex-Congo intermediate stocks of 80,000 to 110,000 tonnes, five to seven months of consumption. Those are third-party estimates, not official data, and Kinshasa has published no export-volume figures for the period.

Copper is the real anchor

Mine output, not the cobalt ban, is what puts hard currency into the BCC’s reserves.

Ivanhoe Mines reported that Kamoa-Kakula produced 437,061 tonnes of copper in concentrate in 2024 and guided to 520,000 to 580,000 tonnes in 2025. The same release said trial shipments over the Lobito corridor cut transit from 20 to 25 days by truck to Durban to 6 to 8 days. A cheaper, faster route lifts the cash a mine can repatriate per tonne, and mining exporters sell dollars to local banks to meet franc costs, which is the channel that ends up in the BCC’s net reserves.

Cobalt is a smaller and more fragile pillar. Higher prices on fewer tonnes raise the dollar take only if the price gain outruns the tonnes withheld, and Benchmark Mineral Intelligence has noted that smaller producers with limited financing are most exposed to a suspension.

What to do with a rising cushion

Plan on copper prices and the cobalt review date, not on the reserve headline alone.

Treat the US$6.7 billion as copper-priced. Copper moves in far larger tonnages than cobalt, so a copper price slide would matter more to the external account than the suspension does. Importers with franc-denominated sales should lock dollar supply while reserves are climbing and the indicative-parallel gap is only a few francs. Mining suppliers should plan for the cobalt review at the end of the third month, around 22 May, and for contracts that name regulatory suspension as a trigger. The checkpoint for the next BCC digest is whether reserves keep rising when the copper price slips below US$9,000.