The BCC’s first-quarter tables show copper and cobalt rising as household-facing output fell.

By Kanisa Magazine · June 2022

Congo’s first quarter of 2022 produced two economies in one set of statistics. Mines pushed out more copper and cobalt than a year earlier, while the factories, plantations and sawmills that serve Congolese households produced less. The Banque Centrale du Congo’s digest of 29 June puts the numbers side by side: copper up 8.9 per cent, cobalt up 16.5 per cent, and beer, flour and cocoa all down.

The BCC’s provisional output figures are cumulative to March and compare with the same period of 2021. Copper reached 884,610 tonnes against 812,566, and cobalt 52,037 tonnes against 44,654. Over the same three months alcoholic drinks fell from 2.80 million to 2.53 million hectolitres, wheat flour from 101,191 to 89,528 tonnes, and cocoa from 33,071 to 13,780 tonnes. The mining headline is real, and it does not describe the rest of the country.

The gap in the numbers

Where mining output rose by nine to sixteen per cent, consumer-facing output fell by ten to fifty-eight.

Set the series next to each other and the pattern is stark. Soft drinks slipped 17 per cent, timber logs 17 per cent, palm oil exports 15 per cent, mobile call minutes 8.5 per cent and gold 33 per cent, from 15,479 kilograms to 10,383. Only the largest industrial mines moved up. The BCC’s monthly activity index for copper reached 224.1 in March, against 145.0 a year before, a rise of more than half.

The authorities’ estimate of the year as a whole stays upbeat. The BCC’s national accounts table projects 6.1 per cent real growth for 2022 and nominal GDP of US$61.7 billion, or US$650 per head. The IMF Executive Board, on 29 June, also settled on 6.1 per cent, trimmed from 6.4 per cent, and raised its inflation outlook to 11 per cent on imported prices. The headline holds. The composition is shifting.

Why mining growth does not become household income

A tonne of copper adds export dollars quickly and wages slowly.

The mechanism is structural. A large open-pit mine adds output through capital equipment, imported inputs and a relatively small payroll. The dollars it earns land in export accounts and, through repatriation rules, in the banking system and the reserve line, not in shop tills. A brewery, a flour mill or a cocoa cooperative sells to a household budget, and that budget in 2022 is being squeezed from outside.

Radio Okapi reported from Kinshasa’s Gambela market on 30 March that a 25-litre drum of palm oil had gone from CDF 45,000 to 52,000, and that a sack of charcoal had risen from 23,000 to 32,000. In April the same station relayed a Le Potentiel report on bread prices rising sharply after a fuel shortage, with 200-franc loaves selling at 300. Buyers cut volumes first, and producers feel it in the next quarter’s output.

The cocoa warning

A 58 per cent fall in cocoa output is a supply signal, not only a demand one.

Cocoa is the outlier in the table. The BCC records 13,780 tonnes for the first quarter against 33,071 a year earlier, and the plantation belt sits in provinces where roads, security and credit are weakest. The BCC does not explain the fall, and the figure is provisional, so it is best read as a flag to check in the next digests rather than as a settled trend. Palm oil and timber, which also fell, share the same dependence on rural transport that fuel prices have made dearer.

What a business does with a split economy

Sell to the mining chain for volume, and price consumer goods for a customer who is trading down.

For suppliers, the mining belt remains the demand centre: catering, transport, equipment services, security and construction in Kolwezi, Lubumbashi and the Copperbelt corridor sit on rising output. For consumer-goods firms, the data say plan on flat or lower volumes through the third quarter and protect margins through pack sizes and pricing tiers rather than through price rises alone.

For lenders and investors, the figures argue for separating exposure. A portfolio tied to mining volumes and one tied to Kinshasa households will not move together this year, and the BCC’s next digests, with April and May data, will show whether the consumer series have stopped falling.