(Business in Cameroon) - Over the 2020-2021 cocoa season (August 1, 2020-July 15, 2021), Cameroon produced 292,471 tons of cocoa. This volume revealed on August 10, 2021, at the launch of the 2021-2022 season in Kekem, is up by 35,319 tons or 12% compared with the 2019-2020 production. It is also the best performance recorded by the country over the past six production seasons, bringing the country closer to the 300,000-tons mark.
During the season under review, local grinders processed 62,341 tons of cocoa, slightly up by 3.3% compared with the volume of cocoa processed during the 2019-2020 season. For the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, this upward performance was facilitated by the commissioning of a fifth processing plant (Atlantic Cocoa), which launched operations alongside traditional transformers like Sic Cacaos, Neo Industry, Chococam, and Ferrero.
The highest farm gate prices recorded went from XAF1,300 the previous season to XAF1,210 per kilogram over the ended season. Those prices even reach a low of XAF700, we learn.
"Thanks to a perfectible but effective internal organization and a preventive export levy policy, the farm gate prices paid to Cameroonians has remained much higher than the prices applicable in other producing countries," Minister of Commerce Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana comments.
The region that benefited the most from those fair prices lauded by Minister Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana is the Centre that accounts for 43.6% of the cocoa beans produced during the season under review. By accounting for close to half of the national production, the region confirmed its status of leader in cocoa production, ahead of the South-west which it outranked some years ago. The latter accounts for 31.6% of the cocoa produced during the 2020-2021 season despite the socio-political crisis affecting its economy since late 2016. The Litoral came next with 13.5% of the national production, the South (5.2%), the East (3.1%), the West (2.9%), the North-West (0.1%), and Adamaoua (0.1%).
Brice R. Mbodiam