An interview with Simon Tuma Waku, DGA of Tenke Fungurume Mining
Interviewer: Simon Tuma Waku, you are DGA of Tenke Fungurume Mining, how do you analyze the current crisis?
Simon Tuma Waku: We are in an unpredictable and serious situation. We decided to keep three quarters of our employees, to avoid large gatherings, inviting those who can work from home, to stay at home. This is a measure to reduce the number of workers on the site. We have to keep producing. What we are concerned about at the moment is the drop in copper prices, not as catastrophic as oil, fortunately. We are less than five thousand dollars a tonne, and we hope that it will not go lower than that, otherwise the profits will clearly fall, but also the revenues of the state like the payment of taxes. This will have a big impact on the country’s economy.
How do you see the longer-term consequences for the DRC?
Our country is based on the mining sector, which is why I insist, the whole mining industry must continue to produce because selling our copper and cobalt is crucial. If the mining sector were to stop, it would be a great catastrophe, it would be almost the country that would stop. We have had quite a bit of discussions with the government at the Primary level. The Federation of Enterprises of Congo was involved in the meetings of the situation to be able to evaluate what needs to be done at the level of supply, at the level of the mining sectors, to give certain reliefs or certain benefits during this period, over two or three months. Fortunately, our government has made this hard and serious decision to isolate the capital from the rest of the country, and it helps a lot because in other provinces it remains controllable.
How do you see the DRC after Covid19? Do you think this can be an opportunity to change things in the country and get back on track?
What I do know is that after Covid19, habits will change. Some things that we didn’t think were normal, for example, wearing masks, are going to become completely normal. With our economy, which is essentially outward-looking, and 80% informal, if we protect the 20% of workers well, we can restart without too much breakage. But let us not be fooled, there will be serious repercussions on the national budget which had been set at ten billion. Today, it is impossible, we will not be able to do what we planned to do especially in investments. I remain positive; but we will have to learn from this pandemic, in the sense that it is absolutely necessary to accelerate the diversity of our economy. I am thinking mainly of agriculture. Everyone knows that we need to make our economy much stronger to reduce poverty in our country.
We’re in the middle of the Corona crisis, and there’s corruption cases. Do you have the same optimism to make a change with certain habits as well?
Absolutely! I think there is a big lesson to be learned, especially in order to preserve our economy. We absolutely need to curb corruption in our country to improve the living conditions of our people, and that is absolutely necessary. However, I remain positive. Perhaps we can take advantage of all of this to get back on the right foot. And why not improve the living conditions of the population?
Let’s go back to TFM, please
We have an exceptional situation compared to other companies. Our workers leave Kolwezi, Lubumbashi or Likasi to work for five days at the site. They are housed and fed indoors and only return home on weekends. This has allowed us to confine the essential workers to maintain production, and to continue to have entries to continue paying workers and continue to pay taxes thus contributing to the solidarity fund for Covid19. At the provincial level, the province of Lualaba is also being helped.
Have you cut your production?
We have maintained production as planned for the year 2020, we are in line with our production schedule, there is no decrease. We are trying to maintain production to achieve the same result as 2019.
Do you think that after the cobalt price falls, the market will recover quickly?
We are quite optimistic from that point of view, we do not think the price will go down again, whether it is copper or cobalt, we should start to see a recovery at the end of the year. We then expect to put copper prices at over $5,000 or $5,500 a tonne by 2021. China will resume its activities, with the purchase of metals such as copper and cobalt expected to resume because construction or manufacturing will restart. For the moment everything is at a standstill even at the level of car manufacturing that the United States is trying to revive, Europe too and even Asia. So the whole world is going to need our copper and cobalt.
Interview by Marie-Aude Delafoy | translated into English by CKM editor
Source: M&B
