Besides, other household and basic commodities were sold at reduced prices.

The one-week promotion sales caravan that sold basic commodities to residents of some neighbourhoods in Yaounde and the Centre Region, ended at Rond Point Express Biyem-Assi on Friday, October 8.

Residents who were attracted by the unsual animation at the sales area, gathered around the van and canopies where products and foodstuffs were displayed for consumers to buy according to their household needs. Top in demand was refined sugar, sold in packets of one kilogramme at FCFA 650. Most of the curious customers bore testimony of higher prices elsewhere in the shops found in the Biyem-Assi neighbourhood. “The packet of sugar that I bought last week cost FCFA 900. But here I have bought a packet at FCFA 650,” said Dieudonné Gusty Kouang, a retired AES-SONEL agent.

In several shops around the neighbourhood, others said the different brands of sugar usually sold had become so scarce that the few quantities available at the counters fetched higher prices. The caravan had another surprise: the introduction of a new brand of sugar called “Dethom Sugar” that spurred the buyers’curiosity. “This is a response by a prominent Cameroonian businessman to the scarcity of sugar now witnessed in the markets,” said Derrick Jackai Mosima, the Centre Regional Delegate for the Ministry of Trade. The high demand for sugar, he added, prompted the caravan coordinator to ration it out with no customer allowed to buy more than one packet. The measure was taken to enable as many households to benefit from the reduced prices and quantities of sugar available.

According to vendors in the caravan, the same phenomenon obtained in other neighbourhoods – Chapelle Obili, Mbankolo, Mimboman, University of Yaounde I, Nkolbission, Mfou, Nkolmessing, Ngoumou – that the caravan passed through from Wednesday, 29th September to Thursday, 7th October. In Nkolbisson, for example, 20 cartons of sugar were sold while at the University of Yaounde I, students grouped in pairs to buy packets of sugar and share thereafter.

Friday’s sales went on enthusiastically and high sales were registered due to attractive prices for soap, cooking vegetable oil, sachets of tomato paste, wheat noodles, mayonnaise, thai white rice, tins of chocolate, matches, liquid detergents and fresh foodstuffs.

The promotion sale is a monthly exercise undertaken after salary payouts by the Centre Regional Delegation of the Ministry of Trade to supply major parts of the region with basic commodities at affordable prices. It is done in partnership with major wholesalers like SOACAM and FOKOU.