On June 13, Forestry Minister Jules Doret Ndongo asked his decentralized agencies to step up controls on the circulation of illegal forest products.  

"It has come to my attention that large quantities of illegally harvested forest products are circulating unhindered and being dumped on the domestic timber market," the government official wrote in a letter.

He also urged the decentralized agencies to step up controls and seize unduly harvested forest products circulating on the national territory. The Ministry of Forestry and Fauna is also required to increase awareness actions and support the owners of wood-processing units and community forests as well as people in charge of timber parks and other stakeholders in completing the procedures required to acquire legal timber.  

The government is waging a constant war against illegal logging. In 2020, some twenty timber processing units (UTB) in the Littoral region were suspended on suspicion of complicity in illegal logging.

According to the Bank of Central African States (BEAC), logging is one of the top 10 export earners in Cameroon. "In Cameroon, production has been declining since 2018. It stood at 2.4 million metric cubes in 2021, down from 3 million in 2018," the BEAC wrote in a business cycle report in 2022.  

L.A.