The Minister of Finance held a meeting with importers and manufacturers in Yaounde on Wednesday. 

Tobacco and liquour products sold in Cameroon will as from January 2012 carry stickers. The measure is in line with the 2009 Finance Law instituting stickers on certain locally-manufactured or imported products and the Minister of Finance’s Decree of March 18, 2010 defining modalities for the implementation of the said law.

“The measure aims at enabling the state to have more information on the origin, quality and importers or manufacturers of the products so as to fight contraband, fiscal fraud, ensure traceability, control authenticity and increase fiscal and custom revenue,” said the Minister of Finance, Lazare Essimi Menye. This was during a meeting with major importers and manufacturers of tobacco and liquour in Yaounde on Monday October 12. Besides contraband, he said, the programme also aims at improving the competitiveness of local businesses and protecting the health of consumers.

According to a circular dated the September 19, 2011 from the Minister of Finance, the stickers will be affixed on all packets of tobacco, cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos, on one hand, and on bottles of wine, whiskies, rhum, gin, spirits and other fermented drinks. The sticker designs have already been adopted and a company chosen to manufacture them. For tobacco products, stickers will be available at the Directorate of Taxes to be distributed to local manufacturers on order while stocks of stickers will be sent to foreign manufacturers who supply Cameroonian importers. For liquours, a customs facility is operational at the Douala Seaport to affix stickers on all imported liquours. A pilot phase on Guinness products has been completed.

Essimi Menye reassured the businessmen that enough measures had been taken to ensure quality stickers and that a transitional period will run for a few months after the launch in January 2012 to ensure that products without stickers are sold out entirely from the market. For that reason, he emphasised that businessmen register all current stocks in warehouses and on transit with Tax and Customs authorities. That, he said, was a prerequisite for placing orders for stickers to the manufacturer who delivers after 10 days.

This new measure comes at the time when uncountable varieties of liquours and cigarettes, some of doubtful quality and origin, flood markets throughout the national territory, creating health and social hazards. An illustration of the importance placed by authorities on the sticker programme is the participation of the Ministry of Health and the National Agency for Norms and Quality, ANOR. The imminent ban on whisky sold in sachets was also announced.