The Makuta Ya Maendeleo Consortium launches the interactive platform for information on the management of mining royalties.
The Makuta Ya Maendeleo Consortium is pleased to announce the launch this Friday, September 02, 2022 of the interactive platform dedicated to the disclosure of information on the collection, distribution and allocation of mining royalty funds paid by mining companies to provinces and decentralized territorial entities (ETD) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The platform publishes amounts to be paid to provinces and ETDs based on debit notes issued by mining divisions and amounts actually collected by these sub-national entities. It also includes an interactive map to view and locate the mining projects subject to the payment of the mining royalty as well as the beneficiary provinces and ETDs.
“The platform aims to stimulate citizen participation and oversight in the chain of collection and expenditure of mining royalties paid to provinces and ETDs in order to promote community development in mining areas,” said Jean Pierre Okenda, Director of the Department. Extractive Industries of Resource Matters and Member of the Makuta Ya Maendeleo Consortium. It is a tool allowing the provinces and ETDs benefiting from the mining royalty to disclose data relating to the amounts collected and their allocation according to the provisions of Article 27 of Decree No. 22/20 of May 13, 2022 relating to the collection, the distribution, management and control of the quotas of the mining royalty collected by the provinces and the ETDs, he added.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is endowed with abundant mineral resources making the country one of the richest in the world in minerals. Paradoxically, the exploitation of these riches has not yet led to the social and economic development of Congolese citizens in general, and communities impacted by the activities of the extractive industries in particular.
In an effort to reduce this paradox, the revised mining code of 2018 introduced provisions to support local development in extractive areas. These are (i) the mining royalty shared between the central government, the provinces and the decentralized territorial entities (ETD), with of course a portion intended for the Fund for the benefit of future generations, (ii) the negotiation and signature mandatory specifications between mining companies and affected communities, and (iii) the deduction of a minimum of 0.3% of the gross annual income (turnover) of mining companies to finance community development.
Aware of the need to act to meet these challenges, the Makuta ya Maendeleo Consortium has been working since 2019 to promote good management of these subnational revenues, in particular the mining royalty, so that they contribute to the sustainable development of the populations living in the areas. mining. This platform is therefore part of the efforts of the Makuta Ya Maendeleo Consortium to promote transparency and accountability in the management of provincial and local royalties.
These legal changes have so far had a very limited impact on community development. Several challenges prevent the conversion of these opportunities into real levers of development for the affected communities. Among them are low transparency and accountability in the collection and expenditure of subnational revenues, limited access to information on production statistics, weak citizen control, approximate knowledge of mining legislation in terms of collection, allocation and management of these revenues by the population and the ETD beneficiaries. Weak transparency is maintained by the incomplete-irregular and/or almost non-existent disclosure of information along the chain of collection, collection and expenditure of the income received.
