By Emmanuel Tumanjong
YAOUNDE, Cameroon--The World Bank and Cameroon have signed an agreement which will enable the West African nation to resume rice production, which had been halted because of floods, state-run Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) reported Tuesday.
Tuesday's agreement, though which the World Bank provided Cameroon with 54 billion CFA francs ($108.5 million), was signed by Cameroon's Minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development Emmanuel Nganoun Djiumessi, while the Bank's Director of Operations Gregor Binkert signed for his institution.
"The World Bank is funding the emergency relief project with XAF54 billion to fortify the 70-kilometer-long dike on the River Logone and the second 27-kilometer-long dam on Lake Maga, all in the Far-North Region. Also, the funds will used to evacuate water from flooded rice farmlands and restore rice irrigators," CRTV reported.
Although it will help increase other crops in northern Cameroon, the project is mainly focused on the state-owned Societe d'Expansion et de Modernisation de la Riziculture de Yagoua, or Semry, which had earlier embarked on a government scheme to lift the country's rice production from last year, but was stopped by floods caused by torrential rainfalls.
Semry lost around 60,000 tons of the 2012 rice output, leaving it with only an output of 120,000 tons that year.
The World Bank loan will also go to enhance the production capacity of rice by Semry in the management and pumping of irrigators, control water conveyance from both the lake and the river, the radio report said.
Cameroon's annual rice imports from China, Thailand and India stands at around 600,000 tons. The African nation's government last year outlined a plan to eliminate rice imports by 2020, when it should have produced 750,000 tons. But the scheme was hit by floods in August and September 2012, which buried around 13,000 hectares of rice farmlands and destroyed rice irrigators among other infrastructures, according to Semry General Manager Marc Samatana.
Write to Emmanuel Tumanjong at realtimedesklondon@dowjones.com
