YAOUNDÉ: On September 8, 2015, Cameroon’s customs in collaboration with the marine arrested in the country’s Southwest, five ships with onboard 1,000 bags of rice which were being exported to the neighboring countries. Following the arrest, it was found that the ships’ occupants had no export permit for the rice.
This catch is the first resulting from the recent partnership between Cameroon’s customs and marine, to protect the country’s commercial space. This collaboration also aims at decreasing, considerably, fraud and contraband whose main starting point is Cameroon’s coastline.
It should be recalled that since 2008, rice imports in Cameroon are tax-free. A breach used by some unscrupulous importers who fraudulently re-export shipments, officially destined for the Cameroonian market, to Nigeria (with the complicity of Nigerian importers) where prices are higher, as a consequence of the federal government’s decision to raise the tax on imported rice to 110% in order to encourage local production.
In 2014, the Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN) reported that, “around 600,000 tons of rice have been rerouted from neighboring ports such as Benin, Cameroon, Ghana and Togo, because of this tax.” The shipments were later re-imported to Nigeria through contraband, revealed the same report.
