National Assembly : Legislators Adopt Mining Code

The bill relating to the Mining Code of Cameroon has been adopted at the National Assembly. The legislators validated the legal instrument after general debates in the course of a plenary sitting chaired by Senior Deputy House Speaker, Hon. Hilarion Etong on November 21, 2023. The interim Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development, Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry responded to the questions of the lawmakers prior to its adoption. The document had earlier been defended by the interim Minister before the Committee on Production and Trade, whose report was read at the plenary by Hon. Kenfack Sonna Ngneguim Anastasie. 
Defending the necessity of the bill before the Members of Parliament, Prof. Fuh Calistus Gentry said, it is a logical follow-up of the policy speech of the Head of State in his address to the nation on December 31, 2022 when he raised the issue of diversifying the State’s sources of revenue with a view to increasing the contribution of the non-oil mining sector to GDP and disclosed that some mining projects will begin in earnest. To this effect, the interim Minister clarified the legislators that the legal instrument is the outcome of a critical review of the December 14, 2016 law to establish the Mining Code. “It seeks to remedy the shortcomings of the law and incorporate the attractiveness, competitiveness and financial profitability concerns that can help to fast-track the implementation of transformational mining projects and increase the solid minerals sector’s contribution to the gross domestic product in the short or medium term,” he stated. The said document, according to the explanation of the Minister, contains 24 innovations, amongst them the devolution of the management of non-industrial mining activities on regional and local authorities, clarification of the legal regime of small-scale mining through a distinction based on resource quantification, institution of the mining was...