In the company of the mayor of the municipality of Lomié, promoter of the construction project of the Integrated Industrial Complex for the transformation of wood in Lomié (Ciblo), the financial partner was received in audience on August 30, 2022 in Yaoundé by the Secretary of State to of the Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development (Minmidt).
On Tuesday August 30, 2022, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NAAZ Trading DMC Dubai, a holding company which, among other activities, does mining, agro-industry and integral wood processing, was received in audience at Yaoundé by the Secretary of State to the Minmidt. If nothing has filtered from the content of the exchanges between Syed Abrar and Fuh Calistus Gentry, we suspect that the two personalities have given an update on the Ciblo project. Especially since we noted the presence of the mayor of the municipality of Lomié, Gérard Lomié, alongside his main financial partner.
Indeed, this audience is taking place a few days after the interministerial visit to assess this project conducted in Lomié, in the East region of Cameroon, on August 18 and 19, 2022, by the member of the Cameroonian government. During this raid, we learned that NAAZ Trading Company, a subsidiary of Naaz Trading DMC Dubai, the financial partner of the municipality of Lomié, the project leader, had already invested about three billion FCFA there through a public partnership. -private (PPP) tied up with the said municipality. “These funds were used to build a primary processing line, a high-capacity drying unit and a manufacturing unit for reconstituted solid wood panels,” said the mayor of the municipality of Lomié, Gérard Lomié, at the time. promoter of Ciblo.
As a reminder, and according to Mr. Lomié, “Ciblo is a project that will federate 152 community forests and 02 communal forests with an area of more than 608,000 hectares identified in all eight neighboring communes. For the moment, the declaration of public utility (DUP) allocated is 53 ha. We will soon extend it to 400 ha. This project will allow local craftsmen and carpenters to have legal dried wood allowing them to shorten their delivery times with quality products in order to limit the importation of furniture from Asian countries”.
The Ciblo will process 150,000 m3 of wood per year during its first years of operation. The more than 300 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), whose workforce varies between 5 and 30 employees, will generate at least 3,000 direct jobs. These SMEs will settle on the site made available to them by the project, which intends to limit imports of wooden furniture estimated, just for public procurement, at around 22 billion FCFA per year.
Bernard Bangda
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