# ARECOMS The Congolese authority that regulates production and export of strategic minerals — and the instrument through which the DRC discovered it could act as a **swing producer** in the cobalt market. Created by decree on **5 November 2019** — the same package that created [[Entreprise Générale du Cobalt]] — as a public administrative body under the Minister of Mines, headquartered in Lubumbashi. It existed on paper for five years and became operationally significant only in 2024–25. Many press accounts wrongly date its creation to 2025. ## What it did [[CMOC]]'s output surge crashed the cobalt price from a post-COVID peak above $77,000/tonne to roughly **$22,000/tonne in 2025**, a nine-year low. Kinshasa's response was not a subsidy or a tariff. It was to stop selling. - **22 February 2025** — a total suspension of cobalt exports, twice extended. - **20 September 2025** — Decision 004/2025: the ban replaced by a **quota regime**. 3,625 t for October 2025; 7,250 t a month for November–December; and **96,600 t for 2026 and again for 2027** — 87,000 t allocated commercially pro-rata on historical volumes, plus a **9,600 t "strategic" quota at ARECOMS' discretion**. [[Entreprise Générale du Cobalt]] and one smelter are exempt. - **Effect on price:** cobalt rebounded to roughly **$57,000/tonne by December 2025** — about a 160% recovery from the trough. - **29 June 2026** — ARECOMS ordered that any first-half 2026 allocation unshipped by 30 June be **automatically revoked into a state strategic reserve**, threatening permanent export bans for violations. [[Glencore]] reportedly obtained a temporary extension on logistics grounds. - **April 2026** — the government adopted a decree instituting a national strategic mineral reserve entrusted to ARECOMS. Three companies — CMOC, Glencore and Eurasian Resources Group — hold over 60% of allocations, so the regime is in practice a negotiation between the Congolese state and three foreign firms. ## Why it matters This is the most consequential thing the Congolese state has done with its mineral position in decades, and it has nothing to do with human rights. It is **resource nationalism executed as market management**: a producer with roughly three-quarters of world supply of a mineral discovering it can set the price by rationing the volume, the way an oil cartel does. Note the sequencing on [[Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining]]: the artisanal-cobalt monopoly, sold for years as a responsible-sourcing measure, was finally enforced **in the same instrument as the export ban** — that is, as a price-support tool. Indonesia has since begun using production quotas the same way for nickel. See [[Indonesian Nickel Boom]]. ## See also [[Entreprise Générale du Cobalt]] · [[CMOC]] · [[Glencore]] · [[Gécamines]] · [[Critical Minerals]] · [[Conflict Minerals Ecosystem]]