Democratic Republic of Congo - Governance of State-Owned Enterprises

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has a relatively large portfolio of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) covering a range of sectors, with a high concentration in energy, transport and water utilities, and mining. There are seven large, strategic enterprises operating in these four sectors. In addition to these, the portfolio includes a dozen or so fully- or majority-owned enterprises (including the national insurance company), plus 20-odd minority stakes in the mining, manufacturing or service sectors. This note therefore focuses on the so-called strategic SOEs (entreprises publiques structurantes) as these are by far the most significant and the information on other SOEs is more limited.

The objective of the report is to (i) assess the quality of SOE governance in DRC, and (ii) gauge the impact of Bank-funded investment projects on SOE governance. For the assessment of SOE governance, the work has drawn heavily on the Bank’s standard methodology which is captured in the 2014 Corporate Governance of SOEs Toolkit.1 The report also seeks to identify SOE reform activities financed by the Bank through its IPF portfolio in the last 15 years and the impact of these activities in terms of governance improvements in the respective SOEs or in terms of State ownership capacity