Trade Minister on June 26 defended a bill to ratify agreements between the three countries.

Egypt and Tunisia are potential markets for some products for which Cameroon has a comparative advantage. Some of the products include fruits, cocoa, coffee, tea, wood, and vegetable oil. But trade between the countries is about to take a different dimension with processing coming into play.

Tunisia and Egypt each signed bilateral trade agreements with Cameroon in 1999 and 2000 respectively to boost trade and economic cooperation. They also intended to encourage and facilitate steady development and diversification of trade between business organisations and enterprises.

Cameroon’s Minister of Trade, Luc Magloire Atangana yesterday, June 26 in a sitting of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Assembly presented and defended the bill to authorise the President of the Republic to ratify the trade agreement between the government of the Republic of Cameroon and that of the Arab Republic of Egypt, signed in Cairo on October 24, 2000. He also did same for the bill signed with the Republic of Tunisia in Tunis on August 5, 1999.

As per the two separate bills, developing relations with the concerned countries is one of the pillars of Cameroon’s external trade policy which seeks to diversify exports. The areas of cooperation under the agreements include business development and management, exchange of economic information, services, as well as exchange of expertise in the economic and trade domains. Though cooperation exists between Cameroon and Egypt in the domain of technology transfer, the bill, when ratified, will enable Egypt to assist Cameroon to locally process agricultural products such as cotton and others.

The ratification of the bill, Luc Magloire Atangana pointed out, should go beyond the current framework of simple trade in goods and services, which is essentially limited to raw materials. The judicious implementation of the agreement, he continued, could enable the country to take advantage of foreign expertise in food processing, trade in services or upgrading of companies, with a view of increased liberalisation of global trade.

The Vice Prime Minister, Minister Delegate at the Presidency in charge of Relations with the Assemblies, Amadou Ali, joined Foreign Affairs Committee members to listen to Trade Minister defend the bill.