The BCC added 34,806 tonnes of 2022 copper in a month, and its farm export basket shrank.

By Kanisa Magazine · April 2023

Between its 29 March and 26 April editions, the Banque Centrale du Congo raised its estimate of 2022 copper output by 34,806 tonnes, to 2,394,630. The same table shows four export crops, coffee, cocoa, rubber and palm oil, shipping a combined 100,111 tonnes in 2022, 19 per cent less than the 123,527 tonnes of 2021. The mining headline got bigger in April while the farm line stayed smaller.

The BCC digest of 26 April offers a rare chance to see both movements in one document, and to ask what an economy with 2.4 million tonnes of copper and a falling farm export basket actually looks like on the ground.

The mining line was revised up

One update added more tonnage than the whole decline in four farm exports.

The April edition puts 2022 copper at 2,394,630 tonnes against 2,359,824 tonnes in March, a revision of 1.5 per cent. Cobalt moved from 111,309 to 115,371 tonnes, up 3.6 per cent, and zinc from 12,309 to 13,578 tonnes, up 10.3 per cent. Gécamines’ own copper rose from 4,562 to 4,674 tonnes, and its cobalt from 19,907 to 20,642 tonnes.

The revisions are positive, but the same update shuffled the diamond series: industrial output fell from 5,576 to 672 thousand carats and artisanal output rose from 8,511 to 11,011 thousand. Provisional numbers do move, and the direction is not always the same.

The farm line shrank

Cocoa fell 44 per cent and coffee 16 per cent, while palm oil and rubber grew.

Cocoa exports dropped from 58,238 to 32,505 tonnes. Coffee fell from 12,732 to 10,729 tonnes. Rubber rose 11 per cent to 6,218 tonnes, palm oil rose 7.8 per cent to 50,659 tonnes and palm kernel oil 9.3 per cent to 21,795 tonnes. Log exports edged up 2.7 per cent to 109,851 cubic metres, with sawn timber flat at 34,794 cubic metres.

The BCC’s footnote says the coffee, palm oil and palm kernel oil figures count production exported, not total output. Anything sold locally or across a border informally is outside the number, so a fall may reflect trade routes as well as harvests.

FEWS NET’s March 2023 outlook said season A harvests were below average in the northeast and centre-east because few households took part in planting, and that conflict-affected provinces would stay in Crisis (IPC Phase 3). Households that depend on farm sales and on food crops face a double squeeze.

What the factories and the port show

Flour, drinks and port volumes grew 5 to 8 per cent, steadily rather than spectacularly.

Wheat flour rose 5.0 per cent to 215,079 tonnes, alcoholic drinks 8.1 per cent to 6.08 million hectolitres, and handling at Kinshasa, Matadi and Boma ports 4.9 per cent to 1.94 million tonnes. Drinking water production rose 8.3 per cent and electricity 1.0 per cent to 13.28 million MWh. That is an economy that grows by single digits, constrained by power and logistics, while the mining line grows by thirty per cent.

The World Bank’s October 2022 update made the structural point that poverty reduction has been elusive despite strong growth. The April tables are the arithmetic behind that: the sectors that employ most Congolese grow slowly and in some cases shrink, while the one that employs few produces the headline.

The reading for a business

Plan sales to farm and forest regions on weather, security and transport costs, not on the national growth figure.

A business that sells inputs, finance or consumer goods in farming provinces should not use a national growth number as a driver. The cocoa and coffee data suggest less export income from the farm sector in 2022, even as national output rose. Sellers of seed, tools, fertiliser or small loans have a market, but one that depends on getting crops to a buyer.

The opportunity is in the gap: aggregation and transport firms that can move declared export crops to Matadi or Boma at lower cost, and processors that keep palm kernel and rubber value in the country. Anyone using the BCC series should check the footnotes, because revisions of this size arrive without much warning.