175 million USD in doorsteps owed by SICOMINES remain untraceable to the credit of the General Treasury Account- DRC

The report of the General Inspectorate of Finance (IGF) recently published in May 2022 reveals that Gécamines suffered various damages in the Chinese contract signed in 2007. This report notes for example that the doorsteps going to the State, on the amount owed by SICOMINES, ie 175 million USD, remains untraceable to the credit of the General Treasury Account to date. And the IGF promises to continue investigations into this issue.

Overall on the Chinese contract, the observation of the IGF is that the signing of the hybrid mining and infrastructure development contracts has not seen any serious follow-up of the investments borne by the Chinese partners and the income made by the SICOMINES joint venture.

“In accordance with article 18 of the collaboration agreement, the organization of annual consultations for the evaluation of this agreement is planned. According to Gécamines, to date, there have only been two evaluations in 2010 and 2016. To date, there is no comprehensive evaluation of the level of execution of the infrastructures planned in the national program. reconstruction of September 17, 2007″, writes the IGF in this report.

In its conclusions, the IGF asked the government to evaluate the SICOMINES contract in relation to the level of execution of the infrastructures retained in the national reconstruction program and which were to be financed by the Consortium of Chinese companies.

It should be recalled that the Chinese contract, in its mine-against-infrastructure component, provided in particular for the construction of 3,213 km of railways, 3,402 km of roads, 45 km of roads and 5,000 buildings for a total cost of 6.565 billion dollars