In April 2023, the three dessert banana producers operating in Cameroon exported 13,928 tonnes, according to data just published by the Cameroon Banana Association.
These exports are down by 4,319 tonnes year-on-year, which corresponds to 23.6% in relative value. In the absence of figures for March 2023, the fall in banana exports in April is for the moment the most significant since the beginning of 2023, after -1.6% in January 2023 and -2% last February.
Assobacam does not explain the reasons for this sharp drop in exports. However, it can be attributed to poor production, which is itself the result of increasingly harsh dry seasons (January-March) due to the effects of climate change. Not to mention the high cost of inputs on the international market, which spares neither small farmers nor industrial agriculture.
In any case, in Cameroon, none of the three banana producers escaped the drop in exports in April 2023. The biggest drop was recorded by the Plantations du Haut Penja (PHP) company, which is also the local market leader. Assobacam data show that exports from this subsidiary of the Compagnie fruitière de Marseille peaked at only 11,336 tonnes in April 2023, compared to 15,030 tonnes in April 2022. This corresponds to a drop of 3,694 tonnes (+24.5%).
At the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), banana exports were only 1,803 tonnes in April 2023, compared to 2,097 tonnes in the same period in 2022, a drop of 294 tonnes (-14%). The performance of this state-owned agro-industrial enterprise, whose employees are currently claiming 28 months of salary arrears, is proof that the wounds of the so-called Anglophone crisis, which have plagued activities at the CDC since the end of 2016, are slow to heal.
Although we do not have all the data compiled in connection with the previous quarter, we should nevertheless recall that the Beac in its forecast test of the economy announced that “banana production would decline in the first quarter of 2023, due to the immaturity of plantations and the surge in input prices,” the document reads.
