Shopkeepers and retailers from different neighbourhoods in Yaounde queued up at different reference wholesale points to buy sugar at low homologated prices under the operation code-named “Sugar Week” that ended last Friday, December 2. The operation that was carried out simultaneously by a group of wholesalers partnering with the Ministry of Trade started on Monday, November 29, sold sugar to consumers and later on to shopkeepers and retailers.
At the agency of the food distribution company, SOACAM, situated at Ekounou, there was affluence on Thursday and Friday as several shopkeepers bought bags and cartons of grain and cube sugar respectively. Hamsa, the branch manager, revealed that SOACAM had a stock of 42 metric tonnes of cube sugar to supply shopkeepers in spite of the huge quantity already sold during the operation. The prices, he said, were those homologated at FCFA 15,700 per carton of 25 kg and FCFA 26,000 per bag of 50 kg. “On Thursday, we sold 364 cartons of cube sugar and 425 bags of grain sugar,” he said adding that price control task forces from the Ministry of Trade were visiting shops to verify that the prices pasted on shelves were in harmony with those homologated at FCFA 650 per packet of 1 kg.
Last Friday, December 3, Meli Stephane, a shopkeeper based in the Awae neighbourhood visited the SOACAM shop to buy five cartons of cube sugar and two bags of grain sugar. “At this price, I now sell a packet at FCFA 650 instead of FCFA 850,” he admitted. Since the introduction of the new prices and increasing supply of sugar from SOSUCAM, he continued, his shop sold at least five cartons of sugar a day. He planned to buy more quantities to stock up his supply in preparation for the end of year feast period.
While new stocks of various sugar brands from the main sugar factories such as NOSUCA, SUMOCAM, OK FOODS and SOSUCAM are channelled through usual distribution channels to supply the rest of the country, the head of the National Task Force for the Control and Repression of Fraud, Jean Marie Nemi Nkolo, has reassured that a system of traceability has been put in place by the Ministry of Trade and its regional delegations to prevent price speculation and artificial scarcity of sugar and other basic commodities throughout the upcoming festive period. He however regretted that Cameroon’s annual consumption level of sugar has risen to 160,000 metric tonnes while production stays at 120,000 metric tonnes. “We have been importing from the Republic of Congo to make up for this deficit in production,” he disclosed.
Cameroonian markets recently witnessed a shortage of cube sugar that resulted in price hikes from FCFA 500 to FCFA 1,200 per packet of 1 kg in some shops. A special importation order by government and the resumption of production by SOSUCAM have brought price levels to normal, at FCFA 650 per packet of 1 kg.
