This is one of the announcements made at the end of the board of directors of the Yagoua Rice Expansion and Modernisation Company (Semry) held on December 30 in Maroua, Far North region.

The Society for the Expansion and Modernization of Rice Cultivation in Yagoua (Semry) has lowered its overall production ambitions for 2023. This year, it intends to produce 80,000 tonnes of paddy rice on a 12,500 hectare crop, compared to a projection of 100,000 tonnes last year. This is one of the main announcements made in Maroua, during the board of directors meeting devoted to the closing of the accounts for the year 2022 and the validation of the 2023 budget, which amounts to 8 billion CFA francs.

This session was chaired by the Governor of the Far North Region, Midjiyawa Bakari. In addition to this announcement, the directors deplored the fact that Semry’s rice is not consumed throughout the national triangle. To reverse this trend, the General Manager of Semry, Fissou Kouma said in his speech that he “plans to set up sales outlets in the southern part of the country (South).

Semry’s projected production for this year is down by 20% compared to last year. It is thus down from 100,000 tonnes in 2022 to 80,000 tonnes this year. For the moment, the company is not revealing the factors that contributed to this drop in objectives, or even the quantity of paddy rice produced in 2022. However, according to some officials of this public company met by EcoMatin in 2022, the production targets announced in 2022 will certainly not be reached, because of the untimely power cuts. These cause a slowdown in the watering of rice fields that are irrigated by electric pumps.

The annual rice demand was estimated at almost 600,000 tonnes in 2020. There is a gap of 436,000 tonnes that Cameroon is forced to import to make up for its production deficit.