Kinshasa Reopens Its Mining Code — and Puts the Stabilisation Clause Back on the Table

What happened

On 13 June 2026 the government introduced a bill to amend roughly 40 articles of the DRC's 2018 mining code. The draft would give the state broader powers to limit production and to stockpile strategic minerals, on top of the code's existing 50% windfall-profits tax and the 10% royalty that applies to minerals on the strategic list. Over May and June 2026 the DRC widened that list, adding lithium, tantalum, niobium, tungsten, uranium and rare earths to a tier that already held cobalt, germanium and coltan, which raised the royalty on those minerals to 10% from 3.5%. The Chamber of Mines convened an emergency meeting in Kinshasa, and the government said it would hear the sector's concerns before finalising the text.

The reform arrives in the middle of an enforcement wave. An October 2025 state audit accused major miners, Glencore's KCC, CMOC's Tenke Fungurume and Ivanhoe's Kamoa-Kakula among them, of underreporting $16.8bn of revenue between 2018 and 2023, and recommended suspensions and prosecutions. On 16 July 2026 tax officials sealed KCC's offices in Lualaba over a multi-billion-dollar assessment Glencore disputes; the finance minister ordered the seals removed days later as talks resumed. Running alongside all of it is a December 2025 minerals deal with Washington that commits the DRC to legal and regulatory reform within twelve months and gives preferential treatment to US-backed projects, including a $9bn Orion Critical Mineral Consortium plan to buy 40% of Glencore's KCC and Mutanda stakes.

Why it matters for dispute formation

The lever here is production, not price. A power to cap output and direct a stockpile lets the state throttle a mine without touching its title, which is the same mechanism a supplier uses to defend a market and a very hard thing to characterise cleanly in a claim. It sits next to a fiscal step-up: a 50% windfall tax, and a royalty on lithium and five other minerals that just tripled to 10%. For an operator, the exposure lands first on the contracts that assumed a fixed regime, the offtake volumes, the financing covenants, the force-majeure language, and only later on the concession itself.

The sharper issue is the stabilisation clause, and the DRC has litigated this before. The 2018 code cut stabilisation from ten years to five and applied the new terms to permits already granted, over the objection of the majors. This bill reopens that seam. A claim built on a general expectation that the rules would hold tends to fail; the claims that survive are anchored in a written commitment, a stabilisation clause in a mining convention, a specific fiscal guarantee, a signed investment agreement. The work for counsel is to read each title against the specific clause it carries, to date every representation the state made and when the operator relied on it, and to separate a lawful tax change from a measure whose effect on a single project looks expropriatory. The Orion deal adds a second layer, because a US-backed buyer stepping into KCC inherits both the assessment history and the reform risk, and a treaty claim can turn on which flag the ultimate parent flies.

Who's exposed

What to watch

• The final text of the amendment bill: whether the production-cap and stockpile powers survive the Chamber of Mines consultation, and on what triggers and compensation terms.
• Resolution of the KCC tax assessment and whether the office-sealing pattern extends to CMOC or Ivanhoe operations.
• Whether the $9bn Orion acquisition of KCC and Mutanda closes, and how the buyer treats the assessment and stabilisation exposure it inherits.
• Any notice of dispute or arbitration filed under a mining convention's stabilisation clause as the new terms reach existing permit-holders.