The BCC’s March 2021 revisions raised copper again, while artisanal output and rubber fell hard.

By Kanisa Magazine · March 2021

Congo’s central bank raised its estimate of 2020 copper output to 1,601,208 tonnes in its 31 March 2021 digest, 13,749 tonnes more than the figure published five weeks earlier. The same table records artisanal diamonds down 28 per cent, rubber down 43 per cent and cocoa up 40 per cent.

The BCC weekly statistical digest of 31 March is the place to see how unevenly a commodity cycle spreads through a country. Mining carries the headline, but the sectors beneath it moved in opposite directions, and the divide follows a pattern of who produces and how.

The revised headline

Copper rose 12.7 per cent and cobalt 15.1 per cent against 2019 after the BCC revised its data.

The revised 2020 totals are 1,601,208 tonnes of copper against 1,420,386 in 2019, and 89,749 tonnes of cobalt against 77,964. Gécamines contributed 23,939 tonnes of copper, under 1.5 per cent, with private partners the rest. The pace was visible earlier: Financial Afrik reported 1,041,445 tonnes by 31 August 2020 against 919,937 a year before, a gain of about 13 per cent.

The state’s own output is almost beside the point. Gécamines reported just 123 tonnes of cobalt out of 89,749, so the public purse benefits through royalties and taxes paid by partners, not through volumes it mines itself. That is why the Treasury feels the copper price within weeks while a rubber estate or a sawmill feels nothing at all.

The flow has carried into 2021. Deskeco cited Ministry of Mines data that Congo has been exporting 22,000 to 34,000 tonnes of copper a week since January. London copper stood at US$8,781 per tonne on 26 March, according to the BCC.

Where the cycle did not reach

Artisanal diamonds fell from 11.3 to 8.2 million carats while industrial output more than doubled.

Total diamond output was flat at about 13.97 million carats against 14.02 million. Underneath, industrial mining rose from 2.74 million carats to 5.80 million, while artisanal digging dropped from 11.29 million to 8.17 million. Gold slid 4.7 per cent to 31,501 kilograms.

The BCC does not attribute causes in the table. The pattern fits a year in which travel limits and thin cash circulation hurt informal supply chains that depend on diggers, buying houses and couriers, while mechanised operations kept running. A company with a mine and a payroll rode out 2020; a million small producers did not.

Farms and forests

Cocoa gained 40 per cent, rubber lost 43 per cent and timber slipped.

Cocoa reached 36,991 tonnes against 26,408. Palm oil rose 6.3 per cent to 14,882 tonnes and coffee 3.3 per cent to 14,223 tonnes. Rubber collapsed from 12,910 tonnes to 7,372. Logs eased 1.9 per cent to 115,446 cubic metres and sawn timber 7.2 per cent to 37,092 cubic metres, and cement fell 21.6 per cent.

Cocoa is largely a smallholder crop, and the figures show that volumes grew in a year when rubber lost much of its output. For sawmills, rubber estates and building suppliers, the metals boom delivered neither volume nor revenue. The money did not diffuse; it stayed close to where it was earned.

What the divergence means for a Congo strategy

Back sectors with a payroll and an export contract, and treat informal chains as a risk premium.

The practical lesson is that Congolese commodity exposure comes in two kinds. One sits in mechanised, financed operations with offtake agreements and dollar income. The other sits in informal supply chains that can shrink by a quarter in a year without any change in demand abroad.

Investors and lenders setting 2021 exposure limits should split their portfolios along that line. Favour cocoa buyers, industrial diamond operators and mine-service contractors that have shown they can keep volumes up, and price artisanal diamond, gold and rubber exposure as high-risk until the weekly digests show a sustained recovery.