1 Billion CFA reserved to fight gold trafficking in 2014

For the 2014 financial year, the Cameroonian government has made available to the Framework to support artisanal mining (CAPAM), the sum of one billion CFA francs for the purchases of gold produced this year by artisanal miners, mostly settled in the eastern Cameroon area, revealed Jean Marcel Essomba, the Coordinator of CAPAM.

The CAPAM programme of the Cameroonian government initially funded by HIPC funds was set up under the Ministry of Mines to manage in the formal system with more than 100 kg of gold produced officially every year, but 90% of it is diverted into informal channels, mainly because of dealers plaguing the mining sites.

To do this, the offices of CAPAM installed in production areas buy gold from mining artisans, to regroup them in GIC and to encourage them to help each other through the establishment of community banks.

CAPAM also conducts community infrastructure like building schools. All actions aim at preventing these mining artisans who are tempted to use the services of traffickers to meet their financial needs.

To stock gold reserves to the National Public Treasury, through the gold purchased from artisanal miners, CAPAM launched a few years ago an operation called "Gold.”

This should be a boost this year, thanks to a recent decree of the Cameroonian government authorizing the CAPAM to charge directly on site 15% of the production of all craftsmen and industrialists working in the mining fields in the country.