(Business in Cameroon) - In correspondence dated June 3, 2015 revealed by Quotidien privé Mutations, the Secretary General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Louis Paul Motaze, has called on Finance Minister Alamine Ousmane Mey to cancel all authorisations for the importation of vegetable oils refined based on their transactional value authorised by his ministerial department.

Indeed, following a March 2009 governmental decision, the importation of vegetable oils may only be made based on a reference value. This practice aims to discourage importing so as to protect the local industry. In the above-mentioned correspondence, the Cameroonian government confesses that “the immediate implementation of these measures will help to save the vegetable oil sector, which has some factories closing due to the risk of a social crisis resulting from the unemployment of thousands of workers (the vegetable oil sector has some 32,000 employees).”

Besides “the immediate cancelling of all transactional value refined vegetable oil import licences granted to date,” the Prime Minister’s Office requires “the strict application of reference prices for all of the sail vegetable oils, including in the regularisation on cargo already imported on unauthorised bases.”