Democratic Republic of Congo

The legal framework analysis aims to provide general knowledge of the national cooperative legislation and of its main characteristics and contents, with particular regard to those aspects of regulation regarding the identity of cooperatives and its distinction from other types of business organisations, notably the for-profit shareholder corporation.

It aims to evaluate whether the national legislation in place supports or hampers the development of cooperatives, and is therefore “cooperative friendly” or not, and the degree to which it may be considered so, also in comparison to the legislation in force in other countries of the ICA region, or at the supranational level.

In addition, the research aims to provide recommendations for eventual renewal of the legal frameworks in place in order to understand what changes in the current legislation would be necessary to improve its degree of “cooperative friendliness”, which is to say, to make the legislation more favourable to cooperatives, also in consideration of their specific identity. This webpage presents a snapshot of the legal framework analysis results for Democratic Republic of Congo

Congolese cooperatives are governed by a basic text: the Uniform Act on the Law of Cooperative Societies adopted on 15 December 2010 in Lomé (Togo). This text is supplemented by other texts that govern, on a sectoral basis, savings and credit, mining and agricultural cooperatives. The application of these various texts is based on the decree of 24 March 1956 on cooperatives.

Law No. 002/2002 and No. 003/2002 of 2nd February 2002 for saving and credit cooperatives

Law No. 007/2002 of 11th July 2002 for mining cooperatives

Law No. 11/002 of 4th December 2011 for agricultural cooperatives

The Uniform Act expressly defines the cooperative and contains provisions which make express reference to cooperative principles.

Cooperative friendliness

The Uniform Act creates an environment conducive to the development of cooperatives. However, specifically, the mining code does not allow the emergence of mining cooperatives since the tax code subjects them to too many taxes. On the other hand, agricultural cooperatives benefit from several tax breaks provided for by Law N°11/022 of 24 December 2011 on fundamental principles relating to agriculture.

Savings and Credit Cooperatives benefit from tax incentives such as exemption from all taxes and duties relating to their savings collection operations.

Key recommendations for improvement

The main recommendation is the amendment of Law No. 18/001 amending and supplementing Law No. 007/2002 of 11 July 2002 on the mining code to lighten the tax regime for mining cooperatives.

Conclusions

Admittedly, the legal framework of cooperatives is problematic, the conditions of operation of cooperatives are also delicate and are hardly taken care of by the state.

_{The legal frameworks analysis is a tool developed under the ICA-EU Partnership #coops4dev. It is an overview of the national legal frameworks at the time of writing. The views expressed within are not necessarily those of the ICA, nor does a reference to any specific content constitute an explicit endorsement or recommendation by the ICA.}