Sodecoton receives 36.5 billion FCFA from a pool of local banks

In the presence of the Ministers in charge of agriculture and Finance of Cameroon, the cotton development company (Sodecoton) formalized Tuesday, January 27, 2015, the agreement of syndicated loan 36.5 billion FCFA, with a pool of 5 grassroot banks, a transaction which was led by the Commercial Bank of Cameroon (CBC).

The biggest envelope of this new funding has been made by Afriland First Bank that contributes to the tune of 12 billion CFA FRANCS. The Cameroon subsidiary of the Ecobank group contributed 7.5 billion CFA francs, then comes the International Bank of Cameroon for savings and Crédit (BICEC) which contributed 7 billion CFA francs. We finally found the Société Générale Cameroon and CBC, which contributed each 5 billion CFA francs.

This is the fifth time that the agro-industrial company seeks local banks to finance its cotton campaign. Altogether it will thus received a total of 103 billion CFA FRANCS. Abdou Namba, Executive Director of the Sodecoton thanked these partners, explaining that the mobilized money will serve, "to foot the Bill for its various providers', and secondly, to pay producers of cotton.

Also, a positive feeling was shared by Minister agriculture, Essimi Menye who spoke of a concrete manifestation of "public-private partnership for a second generation agriculture", and the Minister of finance Alamine Ousmane Mey spoke of a "significant local funding granted to a string of significant value.

The said Banks seized the opportunity, despite a difficult international environment for cotton, the risks of insecurity and floods that characterize the northern part of Cameroon. "The company experienced difficulties, but we believe that it is trying to overcome them well and we support it in its plan to meet the 600,000 tonnes of cotton produced", said Martin Luther Njanga Njoh, the provisional administrator of the CBC.

For some of the players questioned on the subject, the extra-cash seem to have weighed their weight. "The Sodecoton works with organized planters, the largest company in the North of Cameroon, so it cannot be present without working with it. "It must also be said that the company has a significant value chain and finally she turned to exports and therefore generator of foreign currency", said a head of a Bank.

This funding from the local banks pool adds to 8.5 billion CFA francs from a subsidiary of the Islamic Development Bank at the beginning of the month of November 2014. The company is also committed to invest up to 24.6 billion CFA FRANCS in 2015. For the general public, it remains difficult to assess the actual performance of the company, which has not released its financial statement. However it now claims an average annual turnover of 100 billion CFA FRANCS.