Joint statement on the urgency of allocating 0.3% for community development in mining areas

Congo Is Not For Sale (CNPAV), the Makuta ya Maendeleo consortium, and the Coordination of Advocacy Actions for Natural Resource Governance are urging the Ministers of Mines and Social Affairs to sign, without delay, the interministerial order approving the management manual for the 0.3% levy on mining companies’ turnover earmarked for community development in mining areas. More than three years after the revised Mining Code took effect, the order meant to set out how the levy is managed, jointly by the licence holder and the affected communities and under government oversight in line with articles 258 bis and 285 octies, remains unsigned.

The platforms blame the delay on groundless legal debates and on turf-seeking by certain public bodies, in particular the National Fund for Social Promotion and Service (FNPSS), which is trying to seize control of the funds in order to spend them on purposes other than those the law provides. Yet, they stress, all stakeholders agreed long ago on the manual’s content. That consensus emerged from tripartite sessions run by the two ministries with civil society and the FEC Chamber of Mines between October 2019 and December 2020, and was confirmed again at a Lubumbashi workshop in June 2021 and at the IDAK-IDAKI plenary in Kolwezi in August 2021, where stakeholders from seven mining provinces and Kinshasa called for immediate signature.

The platforms therefore ask the two ministers to sign the order at once, in keeping with that consensus and the Mining Code, and they call on Prime Minister Sama Lukonde to facilitate it as quickly as possible.