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BANANA: OUT OF BALANCE?
COMMENT: Dubai Port World’s (DPW) Banana project, aimed at establishing a deep-water container terminal near the mouth of the Congo River, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), continues to prove to be a slippery road, writes Mike Mundy.
The original concession contract was negotiated under the rein of former president Joseph Kaliba and his Common Front for Congo (FCC) coalition. The presidency changed hands in December 2018 with the inauguration of President Felix Tshisekedi and seven months later a new coalition government was announced with 23 members of the executive drawn from Tshiisekedi’s Direction For Change party and the remaining 42 from the FCC.
Following these changes, the office of President Tshisekedi opened discussions with DPW on key aspects of the Banana concession agreement which it regarded as unfavourable to the DRC.
According to local media reports, these included the scope of exclusivity of the concession which extended over a 90km area – and which the presidency wanted to restrict to the area of the container terminal – and the issue of the relocation of a strategic military base at a cost to the DRC of around US$5 million.
The leverage used by Tshisekedi’s office to sit down and negotiate with DPW was that the original contract with the company was due to expire in March of this year – if no state agent was appointed by this time within the concession company.
These negotiations have, however, effectively been scuppered, according to local media sources, as a result of parallel negotiations conducted between DPW and Prime Minister Sylvestre Ilunga Ilunkamba’s government, through the Transport and Communications Ministry, which has reportedly agreed to postpone the expiry of DP World’s contract by 18 months.
Hardly surprisingly, it has been reported that President Tshisekedi was furious on learning of the dual negotiations – and the outcome. Technically, this leaves the Banana project – the rationale of which has been questioned by some market analysts – as ‘live.’ But against this background – and still with no state agent appointed – it is reasonable to question just how much life does it have left?
One thing is for sure, it proves the point highlighted in the article on page 44 of this issue that direct negotiations for concessions often prove to be problematic and generally that it is essential in concession negotiations to strike a balance which future proofs them against the impact of changes in political administrations.