Rwandan company tops list of buyers of Congo Tin

By Rwanda News Agency
Monday, 29 March 2010 16:54

Kigali: Malaysia and Rwanda have become the primary destinations for the Democratic Republic of Congo’s tin ore, amid efforts in the east of the country to prevent the nation’s mineral wealth from enriching armed groups, Kinshasa announced.

Last year, under pressure from the United Nations and advocacy groups who said the tin-ore trade was fueling conflict in eastern Congo, at least two companies stopped sourcing minerals in the region. Their withdrawal redrew the supply lines from Congo’s forests to the world’s tin smelters.

Malaysia Smelting Corp., the world’s third-biggest tin producer, is now the largest buyer of cassiterite from eastern Congo, followed by Minerals Supply Africa, or MSA, a Rwandan company founded in 2008 by U.K. businessman David Bensusan, according to Congolese Mines Ministry statistics, Bloomberg News reported.

Congo is Africa’s largest producer of cassiterite, accounting for 6 percent of global output. In the mid 1990s, fighting in the aftermath of the Tutsi Genocide spread into eastern Congo, eventually engulfing the entire country in a series of wars that killed at least 4 million people.

Clashes continue in the eastern North and South Kivu provinces, where armed groups and some members of Congo’s army profit from exploiting and taxing minerals, according to the government.

In the first two months of 2010, “Malaysia and Rwanda have dramatically surpassed Belgium, which was the principal, primary importer,” of tin ore, or cassiterite, from North Kivu last year, the ministry said in a statement on March 22.

Malaysian and Rwandan companies accounted for 61 percent of registered exports from North Kivu in January and February, while Belgian imports fell to 21 percent of the total, compared with 48 percent for the whole of 2009.

Smuggling

MSA expects to do as much as $70 million in business from Congo and Rwanda in 2010, up from $20 million last year, Bensusan said in an interview in Gisenyi, Rwanda, on March 16. MSA sells all its cassiterite to MSC, he said.

In December, the UN accused Bensusan of smuggling cassiterite through Rwanda, a charge he denies.

Malaysia Smelting spokesman Chua Cheong Yong confirmed that the company is buying cassiterite from Congo, and is working with ITRI, the tin industry group, on a pilot project to trace their minerals.

“We are members of the DRC working group and very much part of the due diligence process,” he told Bloomberg News by phone from Penang in western Malaysia on March 25.

Anyone who buys minerals from illegal armed groups in Congo may face sanctions under a 2005 UN resolution that was renewed in 2009. Last year, both Traxys SA and Amalgamated Metals Corp. stopped work in the region, saying they couldn’t track their minerals.