1. Legal framework

• Law n°004/2002 of February 21, 2002 on the Code of Investments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This Law
• Law No. 14/022 of 07 July 2014 establishing the regime of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This Act has the following objectives:
  1. Improve the legal and institutional framework capable of attracting and safeguarding domestic and foreign private investment, with a view to promoting the country’s development;
  2. Simplify administrative procedures in order to further improve the business climate and attract investment;
  3. Strengthen mechanisms for the resolution of investment disputes;
  4. Provide an incentive, transparent and coherent business environment to encourage private national and foreign investment that generates growth and employment and increase competition in the Democratic Republic of the Congo;
  5. Establish the rules for the organization and operation of the special economic zones, their missions and their boundaries;Determine the supervisory powers of the Agency for Special Economic Zones, including its exclusive and private powers;
  6. Specify the regime applicable to enterprises that may operate in the special economic zones, except for the tax and customs provisions that will be set out in the Finance Act.
• Law No. 14/023 of July 7, 2014 laying down rules on the conditions and modalities for rescuing industrial enterprises in difficulty.

The provisions of this Law shall apply to any industrial undertaking in difficulty as a result of exogenous factors and subject to either preventive settlement or receivership proceedings.

An industrial enterprise in difficulty shall be eligible for the benefits provided for in Article 9 of this Law, provided that it is the subject of a collective procedure for preventive settlement or legal redress aimed at:

• Guaranteeing direct and indirect employment;
• Enhancing the value of local raw materials;
• Guaranteeing the fiscal contribution to the revenues of the central government, the provinces and the decentralized territorial entities;
• Ensuring the maintenance of socio-economic impacts on the local and national environment.

Any industrial company in difficulty wishing to benefit from the advantages provided for in Article 9 of this Law is required, to this end, to file, at the opening or after the opening of the collective procedure, at the latest before the preventive or recovery composition agreement, a request for grant to the National Agency for Investment Promotion.

• The purpose of this Act is to set up an appropriate support mechanism for industrial enterprises in difficulty. This scheme may not be combined with any other preferential tax or customs scheme.

Directing the processing of files to the National Agency for Investment Promotion reaffirms the uniqueness of the investment window.

• Thus, this device will encourage the modernization and the resumption of the activities of the industrial companies through their restructuring and their upgrading in order to make them more competitive in a context of the opening of the internal market.

2. Vision

The industry is one of the sectors targeted in the PNSD to make the DRC a middle-income country by 2030 and a high-income country by 2050.

It is in this perspective that the country adopted in January 2020 the Document of Industrial Policy and Strategies (DPSI), which is the declination of the PNSD and the PRSP 2. The vision of this policy is to provide the DRC with a dynamic, competitive, environmentally responsible and sustainable development industrial fabric based on the expansion of the value creation chain for more decent jobs in order to contribute to the emergence of a diversified and competitive economy.

To this end, the Government intends to jointly support export industries (EI) and those that can guarantee import substitution (IS) by locally generated products.

3. Potentials

The DR Congo has several potentials to develop its industrial sector, namely:

1. Abundant and cheap labor;
2. Diversity of raw materials (wood, oil, minerals, quartz, etc.), favorable to the development of the national industrial fabric;
3. Global internal market of more than 90 million potential consumers, expandable at sub-regional level;
4. Existence of 80 million hectares of arable land conducive to the development of agro-industry;
5. Existence of a large market share in the various industrial sectors, etc.;

 4. Achievements

• Ongoing launch process of the pilot Maluku Special Economic Zone;
• Launch of the Growth Pool project in the city of Kimpese, more than 130 km east of Matadi (Bas-Congo). This is a World Bank project to finance the agricultural sector and road infrastructure in the DRC. Its cost is estimated at more than US$110 million for the entire country, including US$48 million for farmers in Bas-Congo province. It is about helping farmers to increase their agricultural production, etc.