(Business in Cameroon) - Cameroon is the 2^nd most active country on the “Open Timber Portal ” (OTP) which promotes transparency in forestry activities worldwide. With over 600 users, the country comes just after the USA (which has about 1,900 users). It precedes the UK, France, Italy, Belgium, DRC, and Congo.   

The “OTP compiles information from three different sources: official concession boundaries and the list of registered timber producers from the government, documents uploaded voluntarily by timber producers to demonstrate compliance, and observations by third party forest monitors.”

Initiated by the World Ressources Institute (WRI) in collaboration with various organizations, the OTP was deployed in Cameroon from September 2018 to August 2019 in the framework of a project funded by the FAO (under the FAO-UE Flegt) and executed by the Field Legality Advisory Group (Flag).

During the execution period, the project helped unroll the OTP in Cameroon by including authorities in charge of forest matters and companies operating in the sector in the deployment and exploitation process. In the process, about twenty Cameroonian companies registered and many documents were uploaded on the portal. To date, over 400 documents grouped into nine (9) sections are available.

S.A.