Textile: Textile offers an opportunity for good business
The Cotton-textile-fabrication sector is categorised among the niches of growth in Cameroon. The production units involved in the e various sub-sectors employ about 66 600 persons. In this area the country has several advantages and know-how through sub-contractors, craftsmen – dressmakers, fashion designer, master-tailors, etc. It is a potential that the Cameroon Government would like to transform into an opportunity. Through the designing of a project for the re-launching the sector, his ambition is to locally transform all the cotton fibre produced which is about 110 000 tons per annum, in the next ten years. The aim is to move the rate of local transformation from 2% to 10%, by 2020. Mindful of the difficulties faced by those operating in the sector, the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Territorial Development (MINEPAT) is sparing no effort with regard to the means as he is granting various types of assistance to promote the emergence of growth inducing initiatives. This is the case with the recent signing in Douala of a contract and contract specifications relating to the pilot project for the re-launching of the cotton-textile-fabrication sector, with a total cost of 260 million CFAF. The project would take 18 months and aims to rely on a local firm to carry out in the sector’s downstream in clusters. The first clusters shall be inaugurated by the first half of 2018. The next step shall then be to turn the cluster into a tool of private investment promotion and stimulation of economic growth through the production of cotton, and the transformation of the raw material into finished products. A test laboratory for the activities of the pre- industrialisation and production of micro-series is in gestation.
Cameroon Tribune 14-09-2017