Democratic Republic of Congo’s central bank will begin purchasing gold for its monetary reserves from a state-owned trader, the company announced Friday.
DRC Gold Trading SA will partner with the central bank to provide gold from Congo’s hand-dug — or artisanal — mining sites as the country looks to profit from its rich reserves and booming prices, the company said in a video sent to reporters.
“The central bank is vowing to position itself as the principal off-taker of gold produced by our artisanal diggers through DRC Gold Trading,” central bank Governor Andre Wameso said in the video.
DRC Gold Trading was launched three years ago under the name Primera to try to capture more revenue from Congo’s informal gold sector, which provides a livelihood for hundreds of thousands of Congolese diggers but exists almost entirely outside official commercial networks.
Billions of dollars worth of the country’s gold, which is often found in its conflict-ridden eastern provinces, is trafficked to neighboring countries and usually flown off to Dubai, according to Congo’s government and United Nations experts.
DRC Gold Trading is trying to cut the links between gold mining and armed groups and is targeting as much as 18 tons of output this year, the company’s managing director Joseph Kazibaziba told Bloomberg in January. At today’s prices, that amount of gold would be worth nearly $3 billion.
Despite the country’s extensive deposits, the central bank doesn’t currently hold any gold in its monetary reserves, something Wameso called “inconceivable” in the video.
The video did not offer further details about the terms of the partnership.
Wameso told Bloomberg in August that he was in talks with potential partners to build a refinery in the country to augment the bank’s reserves and strengthen the Congolese franc.
“The gold — happily — we have it under our feet,” he said at the time.
-Bloomberg