The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s state diamond company, MIBA – the Bakwanga Mining Company has announced plans to revive operations.
Raphael Mukadi Tshindundu, technical director of Miba confirmed the report and said the moves follows a US $5million capital injection in August last year by President Felix Tshisekedi that aims to help the company become ‘profitable’.
Set up in 1961, MIBA is 80% state-owned, with a 20 % stake by a Belgian company. The facility was closed at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. From an annual output averaging six million carats, mainly of industrial diamonds, in the early 2000s, production was no more than 500,000 carats in 2008 and half that in 2011. A government audit published in May 2020 revealed “serious dysfunction”.
Fall of the company
Poor management, crumbling infrastructure, embezzlement and looting, especially during the two Great Congo Wars between 1997 and 2003, left Miba crippled by debt and at the mercy of plummeting commodity prices are the core reasons for the fall of the company.
Today the situation in Mbuji-Mayi is a far cry from the 1980s, when some 40,000 workers and their families drew their sustenance from the company. The board and management of Miba SA, were also suspended by DRC’s Council of Ministers after identifying major dysfunctions in compliance, governance and management, production and financial administration.
