Following a meeting in Kinshasa last week with the country's biggest miners, the DRC granted miners an indefinite exemption from the ban on the export of cobalt hydroxide, carbonate and concentrate of tin, tungsten and tantalum.
The ministry also announced an exemption from the export ban on copper concentrate, but said the duration of the exemption was yet to be determined and companies were expected to submit proposals in a week's time.
Congo, the world's largest cobalt producer and Africa's largest copper producer, banned the export of copper and cobalt concentrate in 2013 to encourage miners to process and refine the ore in the country.But a shortage of smelting capacity has forced Dr Congo to issue repeated exemptions, the latest of which expires on Saturday.
Congo produced 765,000 tonnes of copper concentrate in the first half of this year alone, up 13.4 per cent year on year, the central bank said.In the first half, 38,816 tons of cobalt were produced, up 6% from a year earlier.But production of tin, tungsten wolframite and tantalite coltan has fallen sharply.
