(Business in Cameroon) - The Minister of Trade, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana, is attending, since 10 July and until 12 July 2017, the first World Coffee Producers Forum, we officially learned.

During this event, taking place in the city of Medellin, in Colombia, this Cameroonian government member exchanged with operators in the coffee sector from over the world, to develop partnerships and further boost the coffee sector in Cameroon, indicates the Ministry of Trade.

This Columbian expedition comes in a context marked by the continued lack of interest from local farmers for this commodity, whose farm gate prices are taking a long time to follow the rising trend observed at least 5 years in cocoa.

All this undermines the local production, which had officially peaked at 16,142 tons in 2012-2013, resulting in the country having the worst coffee season “of the past 50 years”, as specified by the cocoa-coffee professional association.

Despite a production of 24,500 tons in 2015-2016, against 23,865 tons during the previous season, Cameroon is still far away from the forecasts contained in its cocoa-coffee sector recovery plan, which target a production of 150,000 tons by 2020.

BRM