Cameroon’s timber and forestry product exports generated a total of 140.4 billion XAF (in revenue in 2024, an increase of nearly 4 billion XAF from the previous year. According to the 2024 National Accounts report from the National Institute of Statistics (INS), this marks the second-highest revenue volume from these products in six years, trailing only the 147.6 billion XAF recorded in 2021.

These figures show that a tightening of forestry taxation by Cameroonian authorities has not dampened the industry's dynamism, despite complaints from operators. The government has been progressively increasing wood export taxes as part of a strategy to prepare for a planned log export ban across the CEMAC zone (Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, and the Central African Republic), which is to be finalized by 2028.

As a result, the export tax on logs has risen sharply from 17.5% of the timber's FOB value in 2017 to 75% in 2024. The Cameroon Timber Industry Group (GFBC) estimates that the export tax on sawn wood, a product of primary processing, also increased by 165% between 2016 and 2023. These measures, officially aimed at encouraging secondary and tertiary wood processing within the country, have been met with resistance from forestry operators, who at one point threatened to suspend exports.

In a letter to the Prime Minister dated December 23, 2022, the GFBC, which represents 70% of the country's timber exporters, warned of a "deluge" that would endanger companies' "colossal investments." The group threatened to "observe a strike action, which will first manifest by the suspension of customs declarations and will continue with a technical layoff of company personnel. For we are, as of this day, fiscally strangled."

The government, however, did not respond to the plea, and the threatened strike by the GFBC never materialized. Log and processed wood exports continued and even intensified, according to the official statistics released by the INS.

Source: businessincameroon.com