Business

Cocoa prices rose 4.3% from last week at Cameroon's main port due to low supplies of the beans, traders and exporters said Monday.

A kilogram of cocoa beans was selling for 1,863 Central African francs ($3.14), up from 1,786 Central African francs a kilogram a week ago, according to figures from the country's cocoa board. Cameroon is the third-largest cocoa producer in West Africa, the world's top cocoa region.

The country's mid-crop cocoa production is gaining steam after a delay. Mid-crop harvests routinely run from May/June and end in August/September, but months of extensive dry weather have caused concerns that this year's output could fall further than expected.

Cameroon produced over 232,000 metric tons of cocoa in the 2014-2015 season, according to industrial and government figures.

 Emmanuel Tumanjong

 

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Rita Akana

12.Jul.2016

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A rise in Chinese companies operating in Cameroon's timber sector, combined with weak law enforcement, have fuelled a surge in illegal logging that is fast depleting the nation's forests, experts warn.

But the government is hoping a new association it has set up for Chinese firms exploiting forests will strengthen links with officials and enable those companies to work within the law.

Every night, trucks laden with logs negotiate hundreds of kilometres of bumpy earth roads, headed to the port in Douala, Cameroon's commercial capital, where the wood - some of it logged illegally - is shipped to foreign markets.

"We have observed a surge in timber trade activities with the increased presence of Chinese business operators in the sector," said Bernard Njonga, coordinator of Cameroon-based NGO Support Service for Local Development Initiatives (SAILD).

"The illegal forest exploitation and logging business has been compounded by weak laws applied to some groups of persons and not others," he added.

Cameroon's forest loss, as in other countries in the Congo Basin, has increased in recent years.

According to Global Forest Watch, an online forest monitoring platform, Cameroon lost 657,000 hectares (1,623,482 acres) of forest between 2001 and 2014, with the annual rate of loss rising to around 141,000 hectares in 2014.

"The government does not respect its own laws and many forest malpractices go unpunished," said Augustine Njamnshi, Cameroon representative for the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance.

Joseph Armathe Amougou, focal point for the U.N. climate change secretariat in Cameroon, said "laws must be strictly respected" if forest governance reform was to yield results.

Cameroon's government agrees there are some irregularities in the forestry sector, but says measures are in place to address the problem.

LED ASTRAY

Bruno Mfou'ou Mfou'ou, director of forestry in the ministry of forestry and wildlife, said many Chinese timber firms and dealers cannot communicate well in French or English, so they use intermediaries who dupe and mislead them into illegal activities.

"We have realised these Chinese investors fall prey to dubious individuals," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the launch of the Chinese Forest Exploiters Association in Douala last month.

The association, established in collaboration with Chinese officials, will enable Chinese operators "to deal with the government directly", he added.

Association spokesman Stephen Y.L. Chong said it would provide information and advice to members. "This will enable us to operate henceforth within the law in Cameroon," he said.

Forest governance in Cameroon has been reinforced since 2012, with heavy sanctions against violators of the law, Mfou'ou Mfou'ou said.

He cited the suspension of 27 forest exploitation companies in 2012, followed by seven others in 2014, because they lacked the correct exploitation licenses, decisions made in line with the 1994 forestry law.

"We have the obligation to ensure the sustainability of our natural resources for future generations, and this is a collective responsibility of both the public and the government," he said.

Newstrust

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Rita Akana

12.Jul.2016

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Officials of the East Regional Delegation of Mines have disclosed that 70% of Gold and Diamond from the East Region is sold in in the Black market in ASIA without passing through local control.

The Chinese Miners who have employed labourers in Cameroon are the main exploiters and usually use gas bottles to hide the Gold and Diamond from security checks.

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Prince Nfor Hanson

12.Jul.2016

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The National Financial Investigation Agency (ANIF), the enforcer in the fight against money laundering and terrorism financing in Cameroon, received over 500 reports of suspicion in 2014, the pro-government daily revealed, citing a report from the institution. These 500 reports of suspicion (against 250 in 2013), which have already helped build 60 cases transmitted to the Cameroonian justice system, we learn, concern a total of FCfa 128 billion, on which ANIF is hoping to trace.

According to the texts regulating its operation, ANIF benefits from the collaboration of banks, microfinance establishments, insurance companies and other liable institutions. According to the regulation, these structures must transmit to the State’s financial intelligence unit, reports of suspicion in cases of transactions made by their clients and concerning well defined amounts. All of which enables ANIF to initiate investigations.

Money laundering being done increasingly through investments in sectors such as real estate, we learn, ANIF has added hardware stores to the list of structures and other institutions under the obligation of transmitting reports of suspicion.

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Rita Akana

07.Jul.2016

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The Cameroonian subsidiary of the telecom operator Orange announced in an official communiqué published on 2^nd July 2016, having launching, since Friday 1^st July 2016, “the suspension of clients who were not able to get correctly registered by 30^th June 2016”. At the same time, through a message broadcasted on media, Orange Cameroun was inviting “subscribers whose lines were suspended to quickly go to the stores and various registration points with a valid ID card to reactivate their number”.

Based on these suspensions and invitations to register, contacts points set up to this end by telecom operators in the Cameroonian capital were working full time last weekend. The record crowd of latecomers to these registration points, as well as the stores of the operators, continue since today Monday 4^th July 2016. This is for subscribers whose numbers are not “valid” anymore since 1^st July, to prove their identity before being able to have service resumed to communicate through calls, text messages or to browse the internet.

Moreover, some indications given by some operators and public authorities would lead one to believe that thousands of SIM cards are affected by this suspension. For example, according to the regional delegate of Minpostel for the South-West region, Nkwelle Epié, as at 1^st July 2016, the rate of identification among mobile subscribers in his district oscillated between 70 and 75%, for urban areas only.

Additionally, while at Camtel, the historical telecom operator, the attendance rate of subscribers to the last registration operation is estimated at 90%, at Nextell, the 3^rd mobile operator in the country, who claims 2 million subscribers, the rate of registration was pinned at 80% only a few days to 30^th June, the deadline for the operation.

As a reminder, the launch of this new registration operation for mobile subscribers came after the publication, on 3^rd September 2015, of a decree from the Prime Minister giving new directions to operators in terms of identification of telephone subscribers. This government directive was primarily issued in a context marked by terrorist attacks committed in Cameroon by the Nigerian Islamist sect Boko Haram, attacks in which mobile telephones were used to activate explosives worn by the kamikazes.

BIC

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Rita Akana

05.Jul.2016

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The Japanese project to improve quality, competiveness and productivity of small and medium-sized enterprises called KAISEN is now applicable in Cameroon. Minister of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, Prof. Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, launched the Quality and Productivity Improvement (KAISEN) for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises in the port city of Douala June 30.

The project, the Minister underscored, has come to diversify cooperation from education and health to training. “Cameroon-Japan cooperation is objective and more so because Japan as an industrial power is an example of success in the world,” he lauded. 

Cameroon has entered its decisive phase with the training of 43 consultants on the 5S/KAISEN method which seeks to improve quality and productivity of SMEs for two years (September 2015 to August 2017). Trainees were from companies based in Yaounde and Douala. Carried out with the collaboration of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), KAISEN, which in Japanese means changing for the better, will enable Cameroon to have a strategy of support for SMEs and a critical amount of public and private consultants in the domain.

First batch of trainees who successfully completed the “8 Weeks Consultant Training Course on Quality and Productivity Improvement for SMEs” in Douala from May 3-June 24, 2016 were received their certificates. Edith Laure Pokam said the course will bring the ease of organising work, especially as she has received the tools to make good use of space, as well as financial, marketing and human resources, among other things.

Within the framework of the Tokyo International Conference on the Development of Africa (TICAD), the Japanese government through JICA is carrying out the KAISEN in Ethiopia, Tunisia, Ghana and Kenya, among others, which is a key success to their small and medium-sized companies with improved economic performances. It is a management technique developed after World War II by Japanese companies to resolve the problem of competition in which Japan was facing on the international market. Since 2008 Japan has been using the project as a major aspect in technical cooperation to develop the private sector in Africa.

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Rita Akana

04.Jul.2016

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