Jan. 14, 2010 -
PRLog -- The Cameroon Agribusiness Report Q110 includes the new Business Environment ratings and the new forecasting period to 2014. The West African nation depends on commodities and agricultural exports as a central component to GDP. With the global economy tipped for a tentative recovery in 2010, this bodes well for Cameroon's ability to fuel the vital investment needed to continue the impressive gains made in recent years. The government has been making efforts to reduce the price of staple foods, such as rice and meats and this should translate positively to consumption, in addition to higher levels of disposable income. With subsistence agriculture dependent on factors such as pesticides, fertilisers and higher quality seeds, the agricultural ministry has been keen to boost the availability of said inputs with a series of programmes to initiate greater investment in farm productivity. Local coffee and cocoa farmers are set to benefit from a new system disbursing up-to-the-minute market information. The modern market information system - named Infoshare - was part developed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and is seen as being a very useful tool in helping local farmers to realise greater profits by way of limiting the potential for intermediary profiteering. UNCTAD estimates that Infoshare may help farmers increase revenues by as much as 15% in the world's fifth largest cocoa producer, while a successful adoption of the scheme could lead to the concept being replicated across the continent. The system will enable users to access information relating to quality of produce and prices - international as well as local - from a variety of mediums including the internet, local radio stations and mobile phones. It is hoped that a network comprising up to 65 community radio stations will be built, broadcasting in various regional dialects so as to maximise the percentage of farmers benefitting from the scheme. We predict cocoa production to continue gaining a solid trajectory to 2014 as investors increasingly realise the potential of the world's fifth largest producer. Large multinational corporations, such as Mars and Cadbury have been implementing a series of sustainability projects in Africa's cocoa producers, aimed at securing long-term sentiment by working closely with farmers, disbursing technical knowledge and best-practice farm management information. Overall, we feel that the ability of Cameroon to continue attracting investment to improve the state of domestic farming will depend largely on continued efforts to curtail the high levels of corruption that have previously served to undermine investor sentiment. The government can take much credit for its recent efforts to combat the problem, and the arrests of several high ranking officials stands as proof. In 2010, anti corruption sentiment will continue in a similar vein. We feel that domestic consumption growth is lagging production growth, particularly in goods such as sugar, coffee and cocoa that require domestic capacity to add value. At present, primary agricultural production is probably still not sufficient to require a massive value-added industry in those goods, yet as the population continues to record marked GDP growth, people are going to want diversification in their diets and the limited range of domestically produced processed foods will drive food imports, thus hampering the potential for employment, as well as domestic income creation.
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