Batouri sugar project: State of Cameroon vs Justin Sugar Mills

The State of Cameroon has terminated the Memorandum of Understanding signed on April 13, 2012 with the Indo-Cameroonian society, Justin Sugar Mills, for the establishment of a sugar factory in the city of Batouri, located in eastern Cameroon.

According to the government, "the dysfunction (identified by the international auditing firm Ernst & Young) in the implementation of this Memorandum of Understanding, as well as in the project, have not allowed the effective implementation and adequate thereof," says the Minister of Industry, Emmanuel Bonde.

While declining his responsibility for the technical and financial commitments or take of the company Justin Sugar Mills, under the execution of the Memorandum of Understanding, "the Cameroonian government announced to revive this agro-industrial project, the upcoming launch of a call to investors through a transparent process assigned to the project whose site was immediately taken over by the state, with prohibition access to Justin Sugar Mills,” says the Minister.

A total of 60 billion CFA francs has been invested in the sugar complex, which should have been operational by January 2014, were it not for the multifaceted difficulties that marred the conduct of this project, which is supposed to give birth to the first real competitor group in sugar production in Cameroon, French Vilgrain (its local subsidiary, Sosucam is the only producer of sugar and raw cane).

The project aimed to establish plantations of sugarcane on 15,000 hectares, with a total area of 155, 000 hectares allocated to Justin Sugar Mills on sites Tikondi and Bodongoué, in the district Batouri. With the plant's initial production capacity of 60,000 tons per year, the sugar complex Batouri aims to create 5,000 direct jobs and 2,500 indirect jobs.