Accra: The Cameroonian government announced Saturday that beginning August 1, it will initiate a large-scale crackdown to collect over 500 million U.S. dollars in unpaid taxes and customs duties linked to undeclared gold exports.
According to Ghana News Agency, the Ministry of Mines, Industry and Technological Development made the announcement late Saturday, citing findings in the 2023 Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative report. The report highlighted a significant discrepancy between the volume of gold officially declared and the actual volume exported from Cameroon.
Officials clarified that the issue lies not with missing gold but with missing revenue. Under Cameroonian law, taxes and customs duties on gold must be paid prior to export. However, some shipments bypassed official channels, leading to uncollected taxes.
The statement indicated that the government is now actively pursuing recovery efforts both domestically and internationally, specifically targeting operators who evaded payments during the 2023 to 2025 fiscal years.
The ministry has identified two primary groups for action: 51 companies engaged in physical gold extraction using traditional methods but reporting lower outputs than produced, and 33 newly identified sites employing modern extraction systems whose production has neither been declared nor taxed.
'These adjustments will allow the state to recover, in the very short term, at least 300 billion CFA francs (about 524 million U.S. dollars),' the ministry stated. 'This would compensate for the revenue losses of about 165 billion CFA francs (approximately 288 million U.S. dollars) highlighted in the 2023 EITI report.'
In conjunction with the recovery initiative, authorities plan to implement a new system to monitor gold production in real time, aiming to prevent future revenue losses, as detailed in the statement.
The announcement follows closely on the heels of the government's projection that revenue from new mining projects and a revamped gold sector could soon exceed 1 trillion CFA francs (around 1.75 billion U.S. dollars). Should this occur, mining could surpass oil as Cameroon's largest source of state revenue.