A crackdown by Cameroon on the sale of cocoa beans to unlicensed buyers from Nigeria has left farmers in two border regions with tons of beans piling up in warehouses ahead of the start of the main harvest in October, a producers’ union and farmers told Reuters.
Most licensed agents in Cameroon are unwilling to buy in the area because they would have to haul the beans along a 350-kilometer stretch of road where trucks have been attacked by armed separatist groups to get them to the port of Douala, they said.
Cameroon, the world’s fourth-biggest cocoa producer, does not officially export beans to Nigeria. But beans are smuggled there from its South West and North West regions, which together account for around 40% of the country’s cocoa output.
Cameroon’sauthorities have blamed the country’s inability to exceed a targeted annual harvest of 300,000 metric tons on the illicit trade.
Trade minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana estimated that up to 20% of Cameroon’s output in the 2022–2023 season was smuggled out of the country, resulting in a loss of about 10 billion CFA francs (USD 17 million) in taxes and exit duties and over USD 103 million in foreign earnings.
Atangana issued an order last month banning unlicensed bean shipments across Cameroon’s land border into Nigeria.
Source : TVP World