(Business in Cameroon) - Telcar Cocoa, local dealer for the American firm Cargil, will not forget the 2017-2018 cocoa season soon. Indeed, according to a report, published by a Cameroonian NGO Human is Right and quoted by Sunday Times, some of the plants and trucks of this major actor of the cocoa sector (it accounts for more than 30% of Cameroon’s export of beans) were destroyed by Anglophone secessionists who instituted a reign of terror in the two Anglophone regions (Southwest and Northwest) for more than a year now.
The managers of Telcar cocoa (which mainly operates in the Southwest presented as one of the two most important production basins according to the Cocoa-coffee council) explained to Human is Right that its cocoa trade in the Southwest dropped by 80% due to the paralysis of its activities.
“Telcar had to negotiate with the secessionists to protect some of its plants in the remote villages”, the NGO explained adding that apart from Telcar Cocoa, the public company Pamol active in the palm oil sector in the Southwest had to abandon some of its plants due to the insecurity which increased the unemployment rate by 70% in the agriculture sector in that region.
It is also worth noting that according to the national coffee-cocoa council ONCC, cocoa production should decrease during the 2017-2018 campaign. Indeed, fleeing the violence, many producers left their farms while some others who are near the Nigerian border chose to sell their products to buyers from this neighboring country.
Brice R. Mbodiam