Rwanda Forecasts 7.7% Drop in 2014 Mining-Sale Earnings

{Rwanda forecasts a 7.7 percent decline in export earnings from the mining industry this year as a retreat in commodity prices counters higher shipment volumes, State Minister for Mines Evode Imena said.}

Export earnings may “drop to $208.7 million this year compared to $226.2 million generated the year earlier,” Imena said in an interview yesterday in the capital, Kigali.

The East African nation’s export volumes are forecast to rally to 18.6 million kilograms (41 million pounds) this year from 9.6 million kilograms in 2013, he said.

Rwanda is one of the world’s biggest producers of tantalum, a metal used in mobile phones and video-game consoles, accounting for about 15 percent of global production in 2011, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It also produces cassiterite, a tin ore, which is exported to Malaysia, Switzerland, Singapore and Austria.

The country shipped 8 million kilograms of minerals from January through September this year compared with 7 million kilograms shipped the year earlier, Imena said.

While Rwanda only produces conflict-free minerals, clients have been reluctant to buy its output because of perceptions that this isn’t the case, Imena said.

For more than a decade, armed groups and some members of the army in neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo have funded their rebellions and enriched themselves through mineral sales. Rwanda is a primary transit point for tin, tantalum and tungsten smuggled from North Kivu and South Kivu in Congo, U.K.-based advocacy group Global Witness said in 2013.

{Bloomberg}