Particular emphasis will also be placed on the provision of agricultural equipment and other improved seeds at affordable prices.
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Gabriel Mbaïrobe, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (Minader), officially launched last Wednesday, May 10 in Mbankomo, the program budget of his ministerial department. Minader’s 2023 program budget focuses on four priorities: production, productivity of agricultural sectors, development of rural agricultural infrastructure and agricultural mechanization. Particular emphasis will also be placed on the provision of agricultural equipment and other improved seeds at affordable prices.
Data on project financing compiled on the platforms of Minader, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) indicate that 1,369.3 billion FCFA were mobilized between 2010 and 2021 for a total of 58 projects identified. About 61% of this funding is directed towards the monitoring and support of cash crops (cocoa, coffee, banana), or 841.97 billion FCFA.
For this year 2023, the government has granted 14 billion FCFA to support the price of 50,000 tons of fertilizer and for food production and 4.5 billion FCFA to support the production of improved seeds. Already in January 2023, Minader requested support of 41 billion FCFA from the African Development Bank (AfDB) for the Support Program to Strengthen Agricultural Production in Cameroon (Parpac).
It is a program that aims to increase food production by facilitating access to agricultural inputs, to provide support to the agricultural extension system, and to support food resilience. Cameroon aims to achieve a production of 750,000 tons of rice and 500,000 tons of fish in 2030.
As regards agricultural mechanization, at the end of the 29th session of the Board of Directors National Center for the Study and Experimentation of Agricultural Machinery (Ceneema) held on June 29, 2022, it was learned that the Ministry of Economy, Planning and Regional Development (Minepat) has decided to hand over the Ebolowa tractor assembly plant to the said structure.
It was a question of the delivery as soon as possible, of a new cargo of machinery, consisting of bulldozers, graders, trucks, tank carriers, workshop trucks worth 42 billion FCFA will soon be delivered to the site, for the benefit of Ceneema.
