Banana exports have continued to fall, to reach 16,135 tons in May, against 19,037 tons in April, APA reports on Wednesday citing statistics from the Cameroon Banana Association (ASSOBACAM).
Estimated at nearly 3,000 tons of bananas within a month, this decrease in exports is the highest registered so far in Cameroon since the beginning of the year.
Banana exports were the work of two companies: the company of Plantations du Haut Penja (PHP), a local subsidiary of the Compagnie Fruitiere de Marseille, which exported 14,639 tons of bananas, and the company Boh Plantations, which exported 1,496 tons.
As has been the case since September 2018, the state-owned Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC) is missing out. This situation is a consequence of the socio-political crisis in the (Anglophone) regions of the North-West and South-West, where its plantations are located.
Second employer after the state with 22,000 employees, CDC operates in slow motion. It provides only 10 percent of its capacity to the point that banana production, which averaged 16,000 tons per month, is now around 1,000 tons, according to its June progress report.
MBOG/odl/cat/fss/abj/APA