coupures 4 juillet 07 (eng)

Congo angers easterners with right-hand drive ban
KINSHASA (Reuters) - Democratic Republic of Congo is banning right-hand drive cars in an effort to improve dire road safety, angering drivers in the vast country's south and east where most vehicles have the steering wheel on the right. Congolese drive on the right-hand side of the road. The majority of cars in the west of the former Belgian colony, where the capital Kinshasa is located, are imported from continental Europe and are therefore left-hand drive.
But vehicles in the south and east are mostly brought in from Asia via neighbouring Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia, former British colonies where cars are right-hand drive.
"Vehicles with the steering wheel on the right are the cause of a lot of accidents on our country's roads," Gilles-Benjamin Saidi Kampene, president of the national road safety commission, told Reuters on Tuesday.
"We have granted a 12-month period to give them time to put the steering wheel on the left, and after that they will be banned," he said.
Some Congolese motorists said the ban was unrealistic.
"Even if I could afford to buy another car, you can't even find a left-hand drive here," taxi driver Joseph Kabwe told Reuters from Lubumbashi, capital of the southeastern province of Katanga.
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Katanga Chief Sees Congo Copper-Mining Consolidation (Update1)
By Stewart Bailey
July 3 (Bloomberg) -- Katanga Mining Ltd., restarting part of the Democratic Republic of Congo's biggest copper mine, expects consolidation among the country's producers of the metal as output increases.
``It may be that there will be corporate consolidation in the region,'' Katanga Chief Executive Officer Art Ditto said in a June 29 interview from London. ``We could be one of the acquirers, we could be part of something bigger.''
Katanga, based in Toronto, is due to start production from its Kamoto mine by December. Rival Central African Mining & Exploration Co. increased its stake in the company to 22 percent in May while Dan Gertler, a founder of Nikanor Plc, which owns the mine neighboring Kamoto, is a shareholder in a fund that last month increased its Katanga holding to 16 percent.
Miners such as Katanga and Nikanor are seeking to tap Congo's minerals, which include about a 10th of global copper reserves. Investor interest surged since Congo held its first democratic elections in four decades last year following a civil war that killed 4 million people. Copper prices have posted a fivefold gain in the last five years.
Ditto will ask investors at a July 17 meeting to approve a doubling of the company's shares to 200 million, he said.
That will give Katanga ``flexibility for future corporate activity or to undertake equity financing in the future,'' he added, without giving details.
Shares of Katanga rose 10 cents, or 0.5 percent, to C$18.65 at 10:18 a.m. Toronto time. The stock has nearly tripled in the past year for a market value C$1.45 billion ($1.36 million). Central African Mining shares have gained 2.3 percent, valuing the company at 810 million pounds ($1.63 billion), while shares of Nikanor dropped 4 percent for a market value of 1.26 billion pounds.
Share Gains
The board and management of Katanga, including Congolese investor George Forrest, its biggest shareholder, between them control 34 percent of the company's stock.
The Kamoto mine, near the southern town of Kolwezi, will reach full production of 150,000 metric tons of copper a year by 2010. The operation will yield 46,000 tons of copper next year, 80,000 tons in 2009 and 120,000 tons in 2010, Ditto said. Katanga owns the mine together with Gecamines, Congo's state- owned copper producer.
While competition for engineering skills and equipment to revive Congo's mining industry is putting pressure on costs, Katanga's projected first-phase budget remains at $177 million. Nikanor in March raised the estimated cost of developing the neighboring KOV mine by 20 percent to $1.6 billion.
``We're first rehabilitating the existing plant to its historic capacity,'' Ditto said. ``We're confident the reserve base will support a bigger operation.''
Katanga's board will consider expanding the size of the mine in 2009. The deposit could support an operation producing as much as 225,000 tons of copper a year, Ditto said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Stewart Bailey in Johannesburg at sbailey7@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: July 3, 2007 11:28 EDT
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Congo-Kinshasa: Ex-Militia Members in Ituri District to Begin Demobilizing Next Week

UN News Service (New York)
3 July 2007
Posted to the web 3 July 2007
The disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programme for former members of three militia groups in the volatile Ituri district of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will start next week, the United Nations peacekeeping mission to the country (MONUC) has announced.
Under the scheme, to be run by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), about 4,500 ex-combatants from the militias will be registered, asked to hand over their arms and then given assistance to reintegrate into either civilian life or the national armed forces.
UNDP expects that about 70 per cent of the combatants - from the militias Mouvement Revolutionnaire Congolais (MRC), the Front de Résistance Patriotique de l'Ituri (FRPI) and the Front des Nationalistes et Intégrationnistes (FNI) - will choose civilian life, while 30 per cent will retrain for the new integrated brigades of the armed forces.
Two transit sites will be opened before the end of this month in the cities of Bunia and Kpandroma to handle the demobilization process, and they will operate for six weeks before closing so that community reconstruction service programmes can then begin for the reintegrating ex-combatants.
The entire $2.5 million programme, which is being funded by UNDP along with Sweden, Ireland, Japan, Norway and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), will run for just over three months in Ituri, located in the far northeast of the DRC.
Combatants rejoining civilian life will receive $110 to help with transport costs and an entry card into the community reconstruction service, which will allow them to work on manual labour projects such as the rehabilitation of roads, schools and sanitary systems for $2 a day for up to 90 days. If they want to set up their own business, they will be given access to microfinance through local non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Former militia members wanting to enter the integrated armed forces will be transported to the city of Kisangani for training before they can enter the brigades.
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Metorex gets DRC mine stake
By Sherilee Bridge, I-Net Bridge Published:Jul 04, 2007
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Metorex has acquired 38.7% of Copper Resources Corporation (CRC) and a 5% stake in Miniere De Musoshi Et Kinsenda Sarl a 75% owned subsidiary of CRC, for about 600 million rand.
A further offer to minority shareholders of CRC at the same price is to follow this transaction, Metorex said in a statement.
The acquisition, which increases Metorex’s contained copper resource by about 2.4 million tons, will be paid for by an issue of 25 million ordinary Metorex shares.
This share issue will increase the weighted number of shares by 8.48%.
Metorex said the transaction was expected to reduce earnings per share by 2.41% to 49.80 cents but increase the net asset value per share by 44.13% to 516 cents.
In terms of the deal, Metorex will acquire 29,247,126 ordinary CRC shares for GBP36.56 million, approximately 512 million rand, together with five ordinary MMK shares for GBP6.29 million, approximately 88.00 million rand, from the Forest Group.
"The acquisition of this significant stake in CRC provides us with a major opportunity to enhance our already well established copper interests in the DRC," said Metorex CEO Charles Needham in a statement on SENS. "With high grades, the resources offer great potential to add materially to our future copper output," he said.
An Alternative Investment Market-quoted company, CRC holds a 75% interest in MMK in the DRC, a 20% free carried interest in the Hinoba, a copper project in the Philippines contingent upon the establishment of a joint venture with Glencore and a Chinese partner, and a 60% earn-in interest in the Haib copper project in Namibia.
MMK owns the Kinsenda, Musoshi and Lubembe copper deposits as well as various exploration permits in the southern portion of the Katanga Province of the DRC.

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DRC ‘to publish deals’
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) will publish the deals of 60 mining companies as part of its review into the sector, the deputy mines minister said.
Victor Kasongo told Mining Journal the government would eventually publish the terms of the contracts during its review, due to last another two months.
Talks over new contracts were suspended in March when the government decided on the review, amid concerns over improperly formed agreements. Lawyers from the US-based Carter Center are providing independent advice for the review, which began on June 11.
Moto Goldmines Ltd executives were among the first to appear before the commission, Mr Kasongo said.