Countries of the Congo Basin, including Cameroon will likely ban the exportation of timber from January 2022.
This decision was taken via a video conference by the ministers of countries in the Congo Basin in charge of Forests, Industry and the Environment on September 18, 2020.
During the video conference, it was unanimously agreed by these ministers that as from the 1st of January, 2022, there would be a ban on the general export of raw wood in the countries of the Congo Basin.
Despite taking this unanimous decision together on September 18, two countries of the six in the CEMAC sub-region, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea had already decided on this in 2010 and in 2019 respectively. The Democratic Republic of Congo, however, not being part of the CEMAC sub-region had equally voted on this back in 2017.
By putting a ban on the export of raw wood, the long term plan by these seven countries of the Congo Basin would be to create a special economic zone with added tax advantages amongst them, where wood would equally be transformed thereby creating more jobs within these countries as well.
To this effect, the ministers equally agreed on the creation of a Regional Committee for the Sustainable Industrialisation of the Timber sector in the Congo Basin as well as the regulation of the development of forests.
Mimi Mefo info
