The BCC’s February digest shows modest consumer growth, a cocoa slump and a baseline that keeps moving.

By Kanisa Magazine · February 2023

Strip out the copper and cobalt from the Banque Centrale du Congo’s February digest and a different 2022 appears. Beer output rose 8.1 per cent to 6.08 million hectolitres. Cocoa exports fell 44.2 per cent to 32,505 tonnes. Palm oil exports rose 7.8 per cent. These are the numbers of a consumer economy that is growing modestly and unevenly, a long way from the 31 per cent jump in copper.

The February edition adds a warning about the data itself. Within four weeks the BCC revised its 2022 gold figure up by 16 per cent and its diamond figure down by 21 per cent. The real economy beneath the mining headline is both smaller and more provisional than the headline suggests.

What the factories and farms did

Breweries, flour mills and ports grew about 5 to 8 per cent; export crops split.

Alcoholic drinks reached 6,080 thousand hectolitres, up from 5,625. Flour milling rose 5.0 per cent to 215,079 tonnes. Goods handled in the ports of Kinshasa, Matadi and Boma climbed 4.9 per cent to 1.94 million tonnes. Soft drinks barely moved, at 2,628 thousand hectolitres against 2,619. Electricity output edged up 1 per cent to 13,284 gigawatt-hours.

On the farm the pattern is mixed. Exported palm oil reached 50,659 tonnes and palm-kernel oil 21,795 tonnes, up 7.8 and 9.3 per cent. Rubber rose 11.4 per cent to 6,218 tonnes. Coffee fell 15.7 per cent to 10,729 tonnes. Cocoa, which had grown from 5,148 tonnes in 2017 to 58,238 tonnes in 2021, nearly halved in a single year. Only beer outpaced the BCC’s own 6.6 per cent estimate of national growth; flour and port volumes ran a point or two behind it.

Why cocoa fell when prices did not

Production fell while New York cocoa sat near US$2,780 a tonne.

The BCC’s price table shows New York cocoa at US$2,779 a tonne on 17 February, above the US$2,592 of 30 December, and robusta coffee at US$2,098, up from US$1,807. A price signal that rose through the winter does not explain a 44 per cent fall in volume. The digest gives no cause, so the explanation lies elsewhere: logistics, security, or the pull of cheaper alternative crops.

The security point deserves care. Al Jazeera reported on 1 February that M23 fighters had taken Kitshanga in North Kivu after the army withdrew, with more than 450,000 people displaced by months of fighting. The BCC does not link its farm numbers to the east, and a national export total can hide regional shifts. But farmers who cannot reach buyers or roads cannot ship, and any eastern effect is likely to show in the export lines first.

A number that moved after publication

The gold and diamond revisions show how soft the baseline is.

In the BCC’s previous edition, 2022 gold output stood at 27,798 kilograms, a fall of 12.9 per cent on 2021. The February edition shows 32,337 kilograms, a rise of 1.4 per cent. Diamonds went the other way: 17.7 million carats became 14.1 million, with the industrial portion falling from 7.2 million to 5.6 million. Copper and cobalt did not change.

A revision of this size can reflect late returns from artisanal channels and exporters. It matters to anyone modelling the economy, because the sectors where informal activity is highest are where the statistics move most. A supplier or lender who builds a 2023 plan on a single published figure inherits that uncertainty.

Reading the economy beneath the metal

Growth in consumer goods is a wage story, and wages are a dollar story.

Beer, flour and port volumes track urban spending, which depends on payroll, remittances and the stability of the franc. The indicative rate was CDF 2,035.98 at the end of February, almost unchanged since the start of the year, which supports that kind of demand. Speaking at the presidential palace in Kinshasa, Pope Francis told outsiders to stop suffocating Africa and said it is not “a mine to be exploited”, Euronews reported on 1 February. The remark is a reminder that the country’s strongest numbers sit in extraction.

For firms selling to households, the decision is to plan on mid-single-digit volume growth, not double-digit, and to watch the export crops that tie rural income to dollars. For investors, the most interesting gap is cocoa: prices rose and tonnes fell, which says the constraint is on the supply chain, not the market.