Nicolas Kazadi, DRC Minister of Finance: "a program with the IMF is necessary"
Nicolas Kazadi, DRC Minister of Finance.
© RFI / Sonia Rolley
Text by: Sonia Rolley Follow
4 min
In the DRC, after a three-week marathon of negotiations, government and International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegations agreed on the content of a three-year program.
If this agreement is validated by the management and the board of directors of the IMF, the DRC could begin to receive a first disbursement from mid-July on some 1.5 billion dollars.
The Congolese Minister of Finance, Nicolas Kazadi, discusses the challenges of this program.
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RFI: How important is the signing of this program for the DRC?
Nicolas Kazadi:
Cooperation with the IMF is welcome for our government, but we act above all out of conviction, not out of opportunism and even less out of mimicry.
A program with the IMF is necessary.
Because our economy is linked to other economies in the world, it is important to send a signal that attests to our desire to bring the DRC back to good economic and financial practices.
This paves the way for disbursements that could reach a billion and a half dollars over three years. But in exchange for this money, there is a whole series of reforms to which the DRC is committed. What reforms are these
?
The main reforms relate to taxation.
It is simply aimed at simplification with a view to increased revenue mobilization and above all in a better business climate.
What are the major revenue mobilization measures planned in this program?
There are several, in particular those related to exemptions, also related to VAT which continues to pose a lot of problems.
But there are also the non-tax revenues, there are some difficulties between those applied at the central level and those applied at the lower levels, but anyway, we will have the opportunity to make them very soon public and in detail. .
With the signing of this program, can we expect the publication of new mining contracts?
Yes, the principle is that all new mining contracts must be published.
This is the end of maintaining
opacity in this sector
, as we have lived for too long to the detriment of the general interest.
There were preconditions that had to be met even before the signing of this agreement, which still needs to be validated by the management of the IMF and in particular to strengthen the independence of the central bank. When will the new board of directors be set up?
Yes, the commitment has been firmly made.
Compliance with the 2018 central bank law will be effective before the DRC file is passed to the IMF's board of directors.
There were still sticking points, we are told, and in particular in the management of funds allocated to the fight against Covid-19. The DRC had made certain commitments to the IMF in terms of transparency.
Yes, in April 2020, the IMF provided support of $ 363 million to the DRC under the rapid credit facility. It was to help our country deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. This support was aimed more specifically at dealing with the health threat, that is to say the health expenditure which was exceptional, but also at mitigating the effects of the sharp drop in economic activity and tax revenues. The most awaited supporting documents concerned expenditure directly linked to the health response. And besides, these expenses were not the most important part of the expenses. Supporting documents were provided in a gradual manner, as they had to be collected across the country. Moreover, they continue to be collected and published on the website of the Ministry of Health.
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