Cotton fibre : 50% of the production to be process in 2025
The Industrialization Master Plan (IMP) will build on a 600,000-tonne increase in SODECOTON production change may soon come in the cotton sector, of which 95% of current production is sold on international markets, with only 5% locally processed by the Cameroon Cotton Industry (CICAM). On a working visit to Garoua to launch joint national inspections of industrial sector enterprises, the Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development (MINMIDT) presented Government's project for the sector, which seeks to provide 50 %, being the share of our national production, which will be processed on the spot. This is a strategic option contained in the Industrialisation Master Plan (PDI), which rates the textile and leather sectors among pillars for the coming years.
But to achieve this goal, SODECOTON must carry out its own development plan, which plans to increase cotton seed production to 400,000 tonnes by 2021, then 600,000 by 2025. Going by the figures of the last cotton season and its production of 280 000 tonnes, one can conclude that SODECOTTON must double its current production to be able to meet the usual quotas that it places on the international markets and thus to redirect the surplus to local processing.
The 40-billion-francs investment plan currently implemented includes both the acquisition of machinery for mechanisation, the increase of collection vans, bail-out of the working capital for the supply of fertilizer, and obviously an increase in industrial strength to improve crushing.
(Source: Culled from Cameroon Business Today No. 096 February-March 2019)