The IMF’s 2025 forecast splits the DRC into a fast mining economy and a slower one beside it.

By Kanisa Magazine · July 2025

The IMF’s July 2025 staff report expects the Democratic Republic of the Congo to grow by 5.3 per cent this year. Mining and quarrying carry most of that, with extractive output forecast to rise 8.2 per cent, while the rest of the economy is forecast to grow 3.6 per cent, down from a projected 4.2 per cent before the conflict in the east escalated.

The Banque Centrale du Congo’s own estimate for 2025, in its weekly digest of 30 July, is 4.7 per cent. The gap between the two figures matters less than the gap inside each of them. A country of about 109 million people is adding output mostly in a capital-intensive sector, and the households’ side of the economy is growing at two-thirds the pace of the headline.

Reading the two forecasts side by side

The BCC and the IMF disagree by 0.6 points, and agree on the shape.

The BCC’s table puts nominal GDP in 2025 at CDF 217,669 billion, or US$76.4 billion, and income per head at US$701, up from US$656 in 2024. Real growth is 4.7 per cent for 2025 against an estimated 6.7 per cent in 2024. The IMF, which counts 6.5 per cent growth for 2024, expects 5.3 per cent and calls the downgrade from the earlier forecast of 5.4 per cent small. Both slow from last year. Neither forecasts a recession.

The IMF’s split is the key. Extractive output grew about 12 per cent in 2024, helped by a rise of nearly 40 per cent in cobalt output, and is expected to slow to 8.2 per cent from that high base. The rest of the economy grew 3.5 per cent in 2024 and is forecast at 3.6 per cent in 2025.

What the output table adds

Copper ran at a quarter of last year’s total in three months, cement at a fifth.

The BCC’s production table is provisional and ends in March. Copper output in the first quarter was 785,841 tonnes, which is 25 per cent of the 3.1 million tonnes recorded for all of 2024. Cement was 561,843 tonnes, or 21 per cent of the 2.6 million tonnes of 2024. Electricity generation, 3,142 thousand megawatt-hours, was 23 per cent of last year’s 13,470 thousand, and alcoholic drinks, at 1.52 million hectolitres, were 24 per cent of the year before.

Quarterly shares are not seasonally adjusted, so the comparison is a sketch and not a measurement. But the pattern fits the IMF’s: copper is running at its pace, while cement and electricity lag it by two to four points.

The conflict’s drag

The east cost the formal economy its banking and cash, not only its output.

The IMF reports that over 112,000 displaced people were in camps across Masisi, Rutshuru, Lubero and Beni by the end of April, and that banks and BCC branches in the east suspended operations, producing a severe cash shortage. Banks’ direct exposure to the region is about 4 per cent of assets, so the shock is local for lenders, and larger for the microfinance cooperatives and traders who live on cash circulation. The peace agreement signed in Washington on 27 June was welcomed in the IMF’s July press release, which added that its outlook still carries downside risks from the persistence of the conflict.

The digest has no employment series, so jobs have to be inferred. With mining a capital-intensive sector and the non-mining economy growing at 3.6 per cent against a population increase of about 3 per cent, income per head outside the mines is close to flat in real terms.

What a non-mining business does with this

Sell to the mines, but do not budget as if the mines were the market.

Suppliers to mining operations, such as logistics, catering, power equipment and security, have a visible growth path and dollar payment terms. Consumer-facing firms face a market growing at barely the pace of its population, with credit priced at 30 per cent effective in francs. They should plan on volume growth near 3 per cent and win share through cost and distribution rather than count on a market expansion.

The investor reading is similar. Pick sectors by who pays: the one that earns dollars from a mine can grow at 8 per cent, and the one that earns francs from households should budget for 3.