(Business in Cameroon) - Armel François, Managing Director of Société des plantations du Haut Penja, subsidiary of Compagnie fruitière de Marseille, which dominates in the production of banana in Cameroon, is visibly very concerned about the performance of PHP in 2017. 

 “(…) We have no option but to note that the banana market in Europe is largely below the figures used when the 2017 budget was being drafted. In other words, prices are low!”, announces the MD of PHP in the latest edition of “Au Coeur de la PHP”, the quarterly bulletin of this agro-industrial unit. In this situation, the MD points out, “PHP’s margins are becoming very low and the year could end up in disaster, if prices do not increase and more importantly if we do not do anything”. 

Indeed, we learned, the European market, main destination for Cameroonian bananas, is currently over-supplied. Particularly due to the abundance of Latin-American dollar bananas, whose producing countries, this year, are not facing “any weather (el Niño, la Niña, cyclones and other tropical storms), tectonic (earthquakes), volcanic, social or political phenomenon (…), which had not happened for many years”, explains Armel François. 

Therefore, to balance the company’s accounts against this international situation regarding banana prices, the MD of PHP listed some austerity measures which are necessary to implement. “The entire personnel of PHP and each of us can and must contribute to the effort made by the company to adapt to these market conditions. We will surely have to forego some benefits without reconsidering the essential for the telephone, fuel allowances, car mileage, but also convenience overtime and other small benefits taken from the company and where senior management showed a kindness which can no longer be the case”, writes Armel François in the editorial of PHP’s magazine. 

As a reminder, according to statistics from the Association bananière du Cameroun (Assobacam – Cameroon’s Banana Association), PHP exported 124,875 tons of banana in 2016, representing half the global exports of Cameroonian producers (249,610 tons). Beside banana, this food company also produces Penja white pepper (approximately 40 tons per year), and just moved into cocoa, with the creation of farms covering 150 hectares and the construction of a processing unit producing chocolate locally under the brand “Atelier des cinq volcans”.

Brice R. Mbodiam