Congo's double challenge: Dependence on oil and food imports
Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who will start a new five-year term on Friday, has set the country a mighty challenge: to curb its reliance on revenue from oil and to grow more food.
And in a country that has notched up huge debts under his
decades-long rule, he also plans to boost industry and revive the country's
decrepit railways.
Congo, a land of five million people that abuts the vast Democratic
Republic of Congo, has recently had some good economic news.
Things are looking up in its oil capital Pointe-Noire, with
production reaching a record 350,000 barrels per day -- even as global oil
prices have risen to almost $65 (54 euros) per barrel.
Crude constitutes the country's primary wealth, earning 1.65
billion euros in 2018, according to the Extractive Industries Transparency
Initiative (EITI), a global watchdog.
Of this, 448 million euros went to China to pay for
Chinese-built infrastructure, EITI said in a report.
Another 340 million went to paying off pre-financing
agreements with traders Glencore and Trafigura.
"After we pay back China and the traders, we have 10
percent left (of net oil income) which goes into public coffers to finance the
state," said Brice Mackosso, a veteran activist for transparency in
accounts.
In January 2020, the investigative campaign group Global
Witness said there were other liabilities of at least $2.7 billion by the state
oil company to joint venture partners, including Total, Chevron and Eni.
This meant that the country's debt level -- estimated in
2019 by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at nearly $9.5 billion when it
awarded a bailout of $449 million -- could in reality be more than a third higher,
it said.
Congo's true public debt could thus be about 115 percent of
GDP, Global Witness said.
In Nkayi, a town on the RN1 highway between Pointe-Noire and
the capital Brazzaville, sugar refining firm SARIS is one of Congo's rare
agricultural success stories.
Its factory sits in hundreds of hectares of sugar cane
plantations on the clay plains of the Bouenza region it has cultivated for 50
years.
SARIS produces enough to supply Congo's 55,000-tonne demand
with a surplus left for export, managing director Guillaume Ranson says.
But in almost every other important agricultural area, Congo
has to import to meet its needs.
A new sister enterprise, SGMP, has been built in
Pointe-Noire to produce corn in partnership with small maize growers in the
region.
"The president is right" to push agriculture, said
Joseph, one of the farmers.
"You see how rich the land is. I live well. The
children are at school. I even have a garage thanks to farming," he added.
Julia Gardies, a young agricultural engineer offering
farmers guidance on seeds and fertilisers, says SGMP has "more and more
requests" from people keen to start out in growing or agribusiness --
although "cash flow and the supply of inputs" still drag on
expansion.
In industry, new cement factories built for the company of
Africa's richest man, Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, can be seen from the
road east towards Brazzaville.
But less than two years ago 375 employees lost their jobs
when the Diamond Cement plant built with Indian and Togolese capital went
bankrupt in Mindouli, 100 kilometres (60 miles) west of Brazzaville in the
southern region of Pool.
Mindouli is also a station on the Congo-Ocean railway which
crosses the far south of the country from Pointe-Noire to Brazzaville.
Only freight trains have run since Pool was racked by civil
war in 2016-17, and they are stormed by dozens of stowaways.
"I've been here for hours. There's no fixed
timetable," sighed a 51-year-old man, Jeff Alden, who came for medical
exams.
He was surrounded by bags of cassava, bananas and safflower
that were being hawked in an improvised market on the platform.
"We want change. When he came to power, I was 10 years
old," Alden said of Sassou Nguesso, 77, who has headed authoritarian
regimes since 1979 with a brief hiatus early in the 1990s.
Constitutional changes could keep him in post until 2031.
Comments
Post a Comment