PARIS (Reuters) – French mining group Eramet said on Wednesday it was pausing all operations in Gabon after a group of senior Gabonese army officers announced they had seized power.
“As of this morning, all Comilog and Setrag operations have been shut down and rail traffic has been suspended,” a spokesman for the group told Reuters.
Comilog (Ogooué Mining Company) is a manganese producer majority owned by Eramet and Setrag (Transgabonais Operating Company) a rail transport company operating the Gabonese railway network.
Eramet lost 14.04% at 12:44 GMT on the Paris Stock Exchange after the announcement of the suspension of its activities in Gabon.
“Their market share is so important in manganese that if they suspend activity for too long (…), it will be felt and drive up the price of manganese ore, and therefore offset the loss linked to the drop in volume,” Nicolas Montel, an analyst at BNP Paribas, told Reuters.
“They are stopping for the safety of their personnel and their infrastructure (…) So it’s really for short-term safety reasons, there is no real reason for them to stop production beyond that,” he added.
A group of senior Gabonese army officers announced on television on Wednesday that they had seized power due to lack of credibility in the recent general elections, shortly after Ali Bongo’s victory in the presidential election was announced.
Earlier, the president of the Gabonese Election Center (CGE) announced that Ali Bongo had won a third term in the presidential election with 64.27% of the vote.
(Sybille report from La Hamaide, with the contribution of Nathan Vifflin, written by Tangi Salaün, Zhifan Liu and Kate Entringer)
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