(Business in Cameroon) - According to Dagobert Boumal, Managing Director of Cameroon Tea Estate (CTE), the agro-industrial company that operates tea plantations in North-West Cameroon plans to quadruple its tea production in two to three years (by 2016 or 2017). He indicated that current production currently varies between 5,000 and 7,000 tonnes per annum.
CTE, which took over the tea division of Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) while the latter kept only its banana, rubber and palm oil ventures, hopes to take advantage of the preferential Customs arrangements that it has just received from CEMAC and CEEAC heads. The two regional entities represent a market of 140 million Central African consumers.
Since May 2, 2014 and November 7, 2014, the CTE has been granted preferential access to CEMAC and CEEAC respectively, enabling it to export products duty-free to the Central African countries that are members of these regional organisations.
Virtual manna for the agro-industrial company which has been in a sector in which “the local market has been facing unscrupulous competition,” according to the Cameroonian Trade Minister, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana. Indeed, facing the invasion of foreign teas, particularly from China, local producers have been selling “mainly to the Central African region,” confessed Minister Mbarga Atangana.