Palm oil sector records 190b CFA francs annual turnover

Palm oil producers, agro-industries that use it as raw material and traders, who sell both the oil and its derivatives thereof, are claiming an annual turnover of 190 billion CFA in Cameroon, revealed the Secretary of State to the Minister of Industry and Mines, Fuh Calistus Gentry, after a just-ended workshop in Yaounde.

However this statistic does not obscure the production shortfall facing the palm oil sector in Cameroon, where the volume of imports to meet domestic demand, is on average 16,000 tons per year.

Indeed, Cameroon is the 10th largest palm oil producer and the 3rd African producer after Nigeria (940 thousand tones) and Ivory Coast (417,000 tones), producing only 322,000 tons of palm oil per year (FAO 2012 figures)for a local demand that exceeds 350,000 tons.

The origin of this gap, according to Mr. Calistus Gentry is, the "difficult access to land, low mechanization of production, low yields per hectare (because of the limited use of improved seed varieties), the low rate of technology transfer, the high cost of energy, etc..."

There are so many obstacles that the improvement Project of the productivity and competitiveness of the palm oil industry (APROCOM-PH), implemented in Cameroon since 2010, is trying to fight with the support of the United Nations industrial Development Organization (ONUDI).