By Emmanuel Tumanjong

Special to Dow Jones Newswires


The Cameroon government said Tuesday that it will assign troops and customs officials as it aims to crack down on the illegal export of the country's cocoa beans to neighboring Nigeria.

"We're going to mount a solid patrol of troops, customs and administrative officers who will combine with vigilante groups to stop the phenomenon," Cameroon's Minister of Trade Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana told a meeting Tuesday in Yaounde.

Cameroon exports cocoa overseas but doesn't officially export to its neighbor, and is aiming to prevent traders from buying up beans in towns such as Mamfe, Kumba, Muyuka in the South West Region and smuggling them across the border into Nigeria.

"I believe that [smuggling] is one of several reasons why it has become very difficult for our yearly cocoa harvest to exceed 300,000 metric tons," Minister Atangana said, adding that the patrol will be mounted before the main crop cocoa harvests start in July or August.


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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

06-14-23 1220ET