“FCFA 200 Billion Needed To Put CDC Back On Its Feet”

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“FCFA 200 Billion Needed To Put CDC Back On Its Feet”

30 août 2021 04:39

Franklin Ngoni Njie, General Manager of Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC).

Mr General Manager of Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), what is the prevailing situation of your corporation at the moment amidst the crisis?

Well, CDC I will say is quite battered, negatively impacted by the socio-political crisis but there is every reason to hope for the fact that CDC remains alive and will be revamped. When I think of CDC, the picture that I always have in my mind is the palm tree that never dies. In the situation where there is severe wind, it bends with the wind but when the wind passes, it comes back and stands tall and faces the sun.

Which of the segment of its crops is severely battered?

The banana sector was most severely hit. The duration on the attack on the banana sector was not as long as the rubber and oil palm plantations but the peculiarity here is the sensitivity of the banana plant which requires permanent attention. So with growing insecurity, attacks on workers, attacks on parking stations, work stopped for a certain duration which was too long to the extent that we lost plantations. Out of 3,715 hectares, we lost 3,300 hectares. That is enormous. If you want to know the weight of the banana group in CDC, I will give you two figures. The turnover from banana is averagely FCFA 35 billion annually. The number of workers employed for less than 4,000 hectares is over 6,000. So, you see the weight of the banana sector. We have succeeded to rehabilitate 414 hectares, we look forward to replant another 200 hectares and there is an idea for some joint venture with partners to see how we can accelerate the replanting schedule by getting them working with us on some special arrangement on 600 hectares. Through that we will achieve a couple of things simultaneously. One of them, which is very important is that we will get people back to work, because there are about 5,000 banana workers in the Tiko plain who have nothing but the hope that they will be able to return to the plantations to earn their daily bread. So, if we accelerate this process as we intend to do, it is clear that we are going to attempt to solve the problems we see in the Tiko plain. Another big contribution is the foreign exchange. I can’t remember the figures now but the figures some 2-3 years ago, total volume of foreign exchange for Cameroon was FCFA 850 billion. CDC alone was bringing in FCFA 35 billion from banana sector, about FCFA 15 billion for the rubber sector. A total of FCFA 50 billion out of FCFA 850 billion was enormous. Just looking at these figures, I don’t think it is far fetch to imagine the present strain we are having with foreign exchange with the country could have as one of the reasons the fact that CDC does not contribute in foreign exchange earnings as it did normally.

Globally, how much is needed to put CDC back on the rails and what is the strategy put in place to relaunch the corporation’s activities?

We estimate that it will take about FCFA 200 billion to put CDC back on its feet. Experience over the past 2-3 years that we have been in serious crisis is that the strain of the public treasury will not allow the government to be able to push in such volume of money although it has to be pushed in. It is important to note that in our type of business, if you push in FCFA 20 billion in piecemeal, it hasn’t got the impact. So in order to get the push, we need that heavy external push from outside. We have attempted to identify some potential financiers who we have taken to the owner of CDC (the State) to continue with the negotiations and see about the requisite finances.