PM orders “urgent” opening of production areas

At the end of the session of the National Road Council which he chaired on 31 May in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian Prime Minister, Philémon Yang, ordered to the Minister of Public Works to “urgently launch the programme to open up large agricultural and livestock production areas and tourist sites”, we learn in an official communiqué.

According to Cameroonian traders, the dilapidated state of rural roads is the main reason for the high cost of agricultural products in the main cities of the country, with the farmers having a lot of difficulties in sending their production to the cities.

Interviewed in June 2015 in Parliament on the reasons for the impractical nature of the roads leading to production areas, the then-Minister of Public Works, Patrice Amba Salla, had pointed out the under-provision of the rural roads maintenance fund.

“The budget allocated to the maintenance of rural and harvest track roads is approximately FCfa 10 billion for a network, whose inventory reveals that it has over 100,000 km of roads”, he revealed.

Based on the calculations of this former member of the Cameroonian government, this budget corresponds to an allocation of FCfa 60,000 per kilometre of road to be maintained, in a country where the cost price for the maintenance of one kilometre of unpaved road is estimated at FCfa 2 million.