(Business in Cameroon) - The company Tradex, standard-bearer for national companies in the distribution of oil products in Cameroon, will restart its deliveries of gas to Société Camerounaise de Transformation Métallique (SCTM), leader in the domestic gas market with close to 35% of market share.

This decision, which will thus put an end to tensions noted for several months on the domestic gas market in Cameroon, was taken on 3 October 2016 in Yaoundé, the capital of the country, at the end of a ceremony for the signing of an agreement between Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC), SCTM and Tradex.

Through this agreement, we offically learned, CBC took the commitment of clearing 50% of the debt worth FCfa 4 billion in total, claimed by Tradex from SCTM for many years. This insolvency has led Tradex, for some months now, to suspend its supplies to SCTM.

According to the agreement signed by the three parties, under the purview of the Cameroonian Minister of Commerce, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, the remaining FCfa 2 billion will be gradually paid over a period of 36 to 48 months.

“Learn to exchange. I hope that in the future, you will solve your problems amongst yourselves and that resorting to the public authorities will not appear as the last solution”, Minister Mbarga Atangana declared to the two operators in the domestic gas sector.

Indeed, confronted with the different stumbling blocks which dotted the negotiations between SCTM, a private company, and Tradex, a public company subsidiary of Société Nationale des Hydrocarbures (SNH); the Cameroonian government had to intervene in this commercial dispute to avoid bringing the market to a standstill, considering the weight of SCTM on the domestic gas market in Cameroon.

BRM