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Cobalt Price — 10-Day Trend Since the Quota System
All prices in ₹ per gram · daily rate, updated once per day
Why the DRC Reached for an Export Ban
In February 2025, the Democratic Republic of Congo did something no cobalt-producing country had done at this scale before: it suspended cobalt exports outright. The trigger wasn't a shortage — it was the opposite. Years of rapid production growth had pushed cobalt prices down to roughly their weakest level in nine years, and Kinshasa's regulator concluded that the only way to stop the slide was to physically hold material off the market.
That's an unusual move for a government to make. Most countries don't have the market share to make an export suspension meaningful. The DRC does, because it accounts for the large majority of the world's mined cobalt — enough that pulling its exports off the market for months at a time genuinely tightens global supply, rather than just shifting business to a rival producer. Today's benchmark rate of ₹3.61 per gram sits downstream of that entire policy arc.
- February 2025: initial export suspension announced, prompted by a nine-year price low
- Mid-2025: the suspension was extended rather than lifted immediately
- October 2025: the blanket ban was replaced with an annual quota system
Cobalt Price by Weight
Today's Cobalt rate is Four Rupees per gram. At this rate, 10 grams of Cobalt costs Thirty Six Rupees.
| Unit | Weight | Price (INR) | Price in Words |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Gram | 1.0000 g | ₹3.61 | Four Rupees |
| 8 Grams | 8.0000 g | ₹28.88 | Twenty Nine Rupees |
| 10 Grams | 10.0000 g | ₹36.10 | Thirty Six Rupees |
| 100 Grams | 100.0000 g | ₹361.00 | Three Hundred and Sixty One Rupees |
| 1 Kilogram | 1,000.0000 g | ₹3,609.99 | Three Thousand Six Hundred and Ten Rupees |
| 1 Ounce (oz) | 28.3495 g | ₹102.34 | One Hundred and Two Rupees |
| 1 Troy Ounce | 31.1035 g | ₹112.28 | One Hundred and Twelve Rupees |
| 1 Metric Ton | 1,000,000.0000 g | ₹3,609,988.00 | Thirty Six Lakh Nine Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighty Eight Rupees |
From Ban to Quota: How the Policy Actually Works Now
The DRC lifted its blanket suspension in October 2025 and replaced it with something more permanent: fixed annual export quotas of 96,600 tonnes for both 2026 and 2027. That's a meaningfully different tool than a ban. A ban stops everything; a quota caps the total while still letting trade continue, and it's allocated to individual mining companies on a pro-rata basis tied to their own historical export volumes — so a producer that shipped more cobalt in past years gets a proportionally larger slice of the new ceiling.
Real enforcement, not a paper limit
The quota system comes with teeth. Unused quarterly allocations that don't get shipped by their deadline can be forfeited to the country's national strategic reserve rather than simply rolling over. Companies that fail to export their full allocated volume, breach environmental or tax obligations, or try to transfer their quota to a third party risk having it revoked outright. That's a materially stricter regime than the open-ended suspension it replaced — it doesn't just limit supply, it actively punishes producers who don't use their allotment.
A separate and stricter measure followed in June 2026: an immediate ban specifically on exports of copper and cobalt concentrate — the unrefined ore form, as opposed to the refined metal the quota system governs. The country's mines minister can still grant one-year waivers for exports judged strategically important, but the default position tightened further rather than relaxing.
Cobalt Price — Last 10 Days
The most recent Cobalt price on record (2026-09-17) is Four Rupees per gram. This is up by Less than One Rupees from the previous day's rate of ₹3.60.
| Date | Price (INR/g) | Change |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-17 | ₹3.61 | +0.01 |
| 2026-09-16 | ₹3.60 | -0.06 |
| 2026-09-15 | ₹3.66 | -0.04 |
| 2026-09-14 | ₹3.70 | -0.04 |
| 2026-09-13 | ₹3.74 | +0.00 |
| 2026-09-12 | ₹3.74 | +0.00 |
| 2026-09-11 | ₹3.74 | -0.07 |
| 2026-09-10 | ₹3.81 | -0.09 |
| 2026-09-09 | ₹3.90 | -0.12 |
| 2026-09-08 | ₹4.01 | — |
What This Means Going Forward
A quota system is a fundamentally different kind of policy risk than a temporary ban, and it's worth understanding the difference rather than treating "the ban is over" as the end of the story. A ban is binary and headline-driven — it starts, it ends, and markets react to both events. A quota is a standing ceiling that has to be re-negotiated or re-set every year, which means the DRC's cobalt policy is now a recurring variable in the global supply outlook rather than a one-off shock that's fully behind the market.
Whether the 96,600-tonne annual ceiling holds through 2027, gets revised, or is followed by yet another policy shift is genuinely not something anyone can predict with confidence today — Congolese cobalt policy has already changed direction twice within about a year and a half. What can be said plainly is that as long as one country controls this much of world supply, its regulatory decisions will keep mattering to the cobalt price the way a rate decision matters to a currency — not a background factor, but a direct lever.
DRC Cobalt Export Ban — FAQs
The Democratic Republic of Congo, which produces the large majority of the world's mined cobalt, imposed a temporary suspension on cobalt exports starting in February 2025 in response to a price collapse — cobalt had fallen to roughly its weakest level in nine years. The suspension was extended before being lifted.
The original blanket suspension was lifted in October 2025, replaced by an annual quota system: the DRC set cobalt export quotas of 96,600 tonnes for both 2026 and 2027, allocated to producers on a pro-rata basis according to their historical export volumes, rather than an open-ended ban.
The DRC enforces real deadlines. Unused quarterly allocations that aren't shipped by their deadline can be forfeited to the country's national strategic reserve, and the government has said it will revoke quotas from companies that fail to export their full allocated volume, breach environmental or tax rules, or attempt to transfer quotas to a third party.
A separate, more recent measure went further: in June 2026 the DRC imposed an immediate ban specifically on exports of copper and cobalt concentrate (the unrefined ore form), a different and stricter policy than the 2025-2026 refined-cobalt quota system. The country's mines minister retains the ability to grant one-year waivers for exports judged strategically important.
Because the DRC accounts for a very large majority of the world's mined cobalt supply, any policy that constrains how much of it actually reaches the market — whether a blanket ban or a quota ceiling — removes a meaningful share of global supply almost overnight, with no comparably sized alternative source able to fill the gap quickly.
