MINING PRODUCTION AND EXPECT- ED BENEFITS Sample Clauses

MINING PRODUCTION AND EXPECT- ED BENEFITS. Under the terms of Article 7 of the Collabo- ration Agreement as stated in the Mining Agreement, the capacity of average pro- ductionby SICOMINES should have been as much as 200,000 tons for copper in the first year of production and 400,000 tons as of the third year. It must be noticed that,like the fiscal exemptions, in achieving the ca- pacity the aim was to facilitate a rapid re- payment of the loan. However, SICOMINES is far from reaching the initial forecasts like shown in the chart below. These amounts show well the fact that SI- COMINES did not reach 200,000 tons of cop- per and cobalt forecast for the first year of production by the Agreement.55 After five years of production, XXXXXXXXX did not reach half the production forecast for the first year, whereas the conventional com- mitment was to put the production up to 55Read Article 7.1 of the 22 April 2008 Collaboration Agreement: xxxx://xxxxxxxxxx.xxx/system/attachments/assets/000/000/276/original/B5bis-Sicomines-Convention-Incl-Anx-2008-Consor- tium-Entreprises-Chinoises-RDC.pdf?1430928308 400,000 tons of copper in the third year of production.56 Moreover, much of the declared production by SICOMINES is com- posed of matte copper and not cathodes. In other words, SICOMINES mainly exports raw minerals, which is a capital loss for the Con- golese party since the repayment of the loans depends upon the benefits generat- ed by the mine. Unlike copper cathodes whose content is high than 90 %, matte copper is lower than 60%. Failure for the Chinese party to respect this commitment exposes the Congolese party. The less SICOMINES produces, the less they make profits, so the Congolese party slows down the repayments to the Chinese loans and their interests. In other words, the xx- xxx in repaying increases the Congolese debt towards the Chinese party. In contrast, the interests of the Chinese loans increase too, which would be a risk of public debt in the Congolese party. According to the EITI report, the signing of the first series of agreements on a 350 million US$ loan took place in December 2008,57 The Technical Committee of Coor- dination of the Sino-Congolese Agreement confirms the fact that China paid 518 mil- lion US$ as of January 2009 as preliminary expenses,58 which helps us understand the line of loans for infrastructures for the DRC was credited as of 2009. Failure for the Chinese party to fulfill its commitment of sharing experience, exper- tise and technicality in order to make the project...