Kinshasa's power float
SNEL, Congo's state power utility, now spends 60% of its revenue servicing debt, leaving 15% for operations, maintenance and new capacity. Its director general opened talks in Dubai with six banks, JPMorgan, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Absa, Dubai Islamic Bank and EXIM Bank of India, to restructure that debt and fund four generation and transmission projects. The state itself is part of the problem: of $24 million owed for 2025 electricity consumption, only $930,000 has been paid, a 3.88% collection rate leaving a $23 million gap. No financing figure has been confirmed yet. Every copper and cobalt operation drawing power off the Congolese grid has a stake in how that number lands.
COMEX slips to a five-week low
Copper fell to a five-week low, with COMEX settling at 6.478 USD/lb, down 0.9% on the day, as LME inventories keep building. Sixty-two percent of LME copper stock now sits in the United States, a concentration that is reshaping the spread between US and global metal rather than just the headline price.
Baltic Dry gives back four days of gains
The Baltic Dry Index climbed for four straight sessions before shedding 33 points to 2,660 on Friday, a 1.2% pullback that ends the week's freight rally on a soft note rather than a clean break.
Chicago wheat slides into a warning
CBOT wheat dropped 4.3% to 230 USD/t, even as S&P Global used the same week to flag fuel and fertiliser shortages, layered on a possible El Niño, as the ingredients for a 2027 food crisis. The price and the warning are pointed in opposite directions for now.
Agent Skills moves to a neutral foundation
Anthropic has handed its Agent Skills packaging standard, already adopted by more than 70 platforms including ChatGPT, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and VS Code since December, to the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation. A technical steering committee drawn from Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and OpenCode will now govern it, with existing licences and integrations unchanged.
On the wire
- Southern Copper is weighing a $680 million mill upgrade at its Cuajone operation in Peru to lift copper and molybdenum output.
- Nickel Industries says Indonesian processors are bracing for cuts as sulphur shortages and tighter mining quotas squeeze Chinese producers.
- India's sugar imports rose 33% year on year to $112.39 million in August, with Belgium, Germany and France emerging as new minor suppliers.
- Zambia secured a $6.17 million grant from Japan for railway maintenance.
- Congo used an AfCFTA forum in Brazzaville to press for faster tariff concessions, citing intra-African trade stuck at 15%.