Commodafrica has announced that, after Mexico’s June 2013 rejection of one hundred packages of khapra beetle infested Pakistani rice, Pakistani exporters have redirected the shipment to Africa.
This was revealed by former president of the Rice Exporters’ Association of Pakistan (REAP) on the oryza.com website.
According to the same sources, the infested cargo is being shipped primarily to Sierra Leone, Ghana, Senegal and especially Nigeria which shares 1,500 km of open border with Cameroon.
It is therefore not implausible that the rejected rice could find its way into Cameroon. This is all the more likely in light of the dissuasive tax (110%) placed on rice imported into Nigeria since 2013.
This development was revealed in April 2014 by the Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN) which stated that, “approximately 600,000 tonnes of rice have been redirected to neighbouring ports such as Benin, Cameroon, Ghana and Togo this year because this tax.”
Furthermore, according to statistics from Customs, Pakistan’s rice that was reported by Mexican health authorities, is among the four top rice exporters to Cameroon.
Even if the top rice exporter to Cameroon is Thailand (52% of Cameroonian imports), Pakistan accounts for 2.7% of imports behind India (26.9%) and Vietnam (16.6%).
