The Vice President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Pim Van Ballekom has inaugurated the bank’s regional office for the Central Africa Sub Region in Yaounde. Today’s ceremony was attended by the Minister of External Relations, Lejeune Mbella Mbella and the European Union Ambassador to Cameroon, Francoise Collet.

Minister Mbella Mbella and Vice President Van Ballekom held intensive discussions prior to the inauguration ceremony. Cameroon Concord News gathered that both men examined the long standing relations between Cameroon and the European Investment Bank and identified new avenues for further cooperation.

The European Union Ambassador, Francoise Collet noted during a press briefing that there would be a massive increase in the volume and nature of financial assistance from the European Investment Bank to public and private establishments in the Central African sub region.

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The Bank of England has warned that life will turn difficult for Britain’s most vulnerable, as inflation is expected to rise due to a slump in the pound following the vote to exit the European Union. Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said Friday that inflation was likely to surpass the bank’s official two-percent target over the coming years. Carney said that the bank was “willing to tolerate a bit of an overshoot” to avoid unnecessary employment. He added it was not the bank’s responsibility to make decisions based on uneven social impacts of higher prices. “We care a lot about distribution but we are not a political entity,” he said, according to The Independent. Carney said that around 500,000 jobs could have been at risk if the bank had not cut interest rates in August.

The pound sterling has fallen by about 18 percent since Britain’s vote to exit the EU (Brexit) in June, the lowest level in 168 years. The Bank of England has signaled it may cut interest rates again later this year. The British currency has fallen as foreign investors wait for signs of the UK’s new trading agreements with the rest of the world. Food and Drink Federation Director General Ian Wright says the cost of importing goods is rising, and businesses will have to pass these costs on to consumers or risk losses.

“If these price hikes persist, there are pretty undesirable possible outcomes: retailers put up prices, manufacturers and or retailers take the hit, or consumers lose choice,” Wright told The Times. The Bank of England’s forecast in August show inflation hitting two percent in the third quarter of 2017 and rising to 2.4 percent in the second half of 2018. Some economists predict prices will rise even more rapidly. Some expect inflation will hit three percent by the end of next year as imports of food and fuel become more expensive.

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Transport Minister, Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, and his new corporate executive staffs of Camair-Co met on Wednesday, October 12, 2016 in Yaounde with officials of the Audit Consulting firm Boeing. Amid tension with the new board chair of the airline company, Mefiro Oumarou, the transport minister reportedly told the Americans that President Biya has chosen Boeing and that the plan developed by Boeing has already been validated and stressed that the new Camair- Co leaders should rally behind Boeing as soon as possible and move towards the implementation phase.

Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o did announce the release of part of the funding needed to redress the airline company. Said the minister, “I am able to tell you that FCFA 30 billion is already available for Boeing to accompany Camair-Co in the implementation of this plan.”

The hard-line position adopted by Minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o has openly contradicted statements released by the President of the Board of Camair-Co, Mefiro Oumarou. Mefiro recently opined that there was need to put aside the recovery plan submitted to the President of the Republic by Boeing Consulting.

The Boeing plan hinted our informant in Yaounde will allow Camair-Co to fly to 27 destinations: 9 domestic, 13 regional and 5 intercontinental. There is a proposal to acquire new aircrafts over a period of five years by 2020. Boeing also requested the Cameroonian government to inject 60 billion FCFA in the computerization of the company and building sheds.

Culled from Cameroon Intelligence Report

Incidences of Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea and Horn of Africa have been decreasing but waters off West Africa remain dangerous and criminal gangs in East Africa are still a lingering threat, according to a new report. These were some of the conclusions from a recent Oceans Beyond Piracy (OBP) meeting that convened 35 maritime experts to discuss the current state of maritime piracy off the east and west coasts of Africa in the runup to the upcoming African Union Maritime Summit in Lomé, Togo, later this month.

The OBP working group meeting noted that the upturn in kidnapping for ransom incidents in the Gulf of Guinea in the last quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 appears to have been reduced through a combination of increased patrols by the Nigerian Navy, increased use of contracted security and a refocus of attacks away from piracy at sea and more towards inland infrastructure.

“While the waters in the Gulf of Guinea remain dangerous, regional nations are increasingly able to respond to piracy attacks through operational coordination across the zones developed through the Yaoundé process. Recent examples of these successes include the Nigerian Navy’s armed response to pirate attacks on the MT Maximus in February and the Vectus Osprey in August of this year. International actors are supporting the regional states by coordinating Maritime Situational Awareness for merchant vessels through the Maritime Domain Awareness for Trade – Gulf of Guinea (MDAT – GoG) framework,” Oceans Beyond Piracy said.

Regarding the rule of law, Oceans Beyond Piracy said there is considerable frustration that regional justice systems are still not able or willing to hold pirates accountable. “As evidenced off the Horn of Africa, the commitment to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate pirates was essential in building trust between the shipping industry and regional states as well as sending a signal of regional resolve to address the issue based on the rule of law.”

For the Horn of Africa region, Oceans Beyond Piracy said it has recorded a decline in international counter-piracy spending from $7 Billion in 2010 down to $1.3 Billion in 2015, noting that an effective deterrence has been maintained due to more cost-effective counter-piracy measures and the overall decline in pirate activity. “However, participants agreed that piracy gangs are still organized and retain the capability and intent to attack international shipping. These criminal networks are currently focused on other criminal activity, but are watching to see if conditions at sea become favourable again for piracy attacks.”

In spite of emerging maritime crises elsewhere, Oceans Beyond Piracy said international forces remain committed to support countries in the Horn of Africa/Western Indian Ocean region to deal with piracy. “It is hoped that support for operational issues can be increasingly provided by regional partners and so-called ‘independent deployers.’ It was also stressed that capacity building plans for regional forces are still many years from effectively suppressing piracy on their own.”

The international fight against piracy has seen the apprehension, prosecution, conviction and incarceration of more than 1 000 pirates. Nevertheless, Oceans Beyond Piracy has urged shipping organisations not to become complacent and to sustain deterrence.

“As commercial shipping patterns return to pre-crisis norms, there is concern that a growing number of vulnerable vessels are not following recommended procedures such as transiting through the Internationally Recognized Transit Corridor in the Gulf of Aden. There are also clear indications that the use of armed guards is decreasing in all areas of the High Risk Area (HRA). These developments may risk creating opportunities for pirates to reassert piracy business models,” OBP said. “Shipping organizations still implore their members to remain vigilant and follow BMP4 recommendations while the HRA remains in effect.”

Culled from Defenceweb

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-OPEC producers will be holding an extraordinary meeting to discuss the latest market situation in Algeria. The key focus of the meeting will be a proposal by Saudi Arabia for producers to keep their oil output at January levels – what Riyadh believes will help stabilize the prices in markets.

Iran has so far rejected the call to freeze its output as unfair and emphasized that it will go ahead with its plans to increase its oil production. Nevertheless, it had made it clear that it is ready to join the plan after its output reaches 4 barrels per day.

The country had been under multiple years of sanctions that limited its oil exports to 1 million barrels per day and also barred foreign investments in its oil industry. The sanctions were lifted in January after a nuclear deal that Iran had reached with the so-called P5+1 group of countries – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany – came into effect.

Reuters reported on Friday that Saudi Arabia has informed Tehran that it is ready to reduce its oil output provided that Iran agrees to cap its own output at its current level of 3.6 million mb/d over the remaining months to the end of 2016.

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The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has expressed interest in investing in Cameroon’s agricultural sector. The desire was made public in Yaounde by a high powered delegation from Riyadh. The Saudi delegation of parliamentarians headed by a former Minister of Agriculture held productive discussions with the Minister of Finance, Alamine Ousmane Mey.

Waleed A. Elkhereiji indicated that Cameroon has potentials in the domain of agriculture hence his country was ready to strike partnership deals. The Finance Minister and the Saudi MPs also examined the negative economic consequences following the sharp drop in fuel prices. Both parties had intensive exchanges on the execution of Cameroon’s budget.

The nine-man Saudi Arabian delegation left Cameroon on the 23^rd of September 2016. During their three-day visit, they met with some senior Cameroon government officials including the Prime Minister and Head of Government, Philemon Yang, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the National Assembly.

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The US internet giant Yahoo says seemingly state-sponsored hackers stole the information of half a billion of its users back in 2014, in what appears to be the largest publicly disclosed cyber-breach in history. Yahoo said in a statement on Thursday that “based on the ongoing investigation, Yahoo believes that information associated with at least 500 million user accounts was stolen.”

The internet company added that the attack came from “what it believes is a state-sponsored actor.” The company said the stolen information probably included names, email addresses, birth dates, passwords and security questions and answers. The internet giant has assured that looted data did not include unprotected passwords or information associated with payments or bank accounts. Yahoo officials said they were working closely with law enforcement regarding the issue. Analysts say the stolen data may also be used to access people’s information on other websites.

This is probably the largest breach of information from a company. On several occasions, internet companies have complained that the US government tried to force them to give away their users’ information. Yahoo’s confirmation of the major cyber breach came after a report earlier this year quoting a security researcher saying some 200 million accounts may have been accessed and that hacked data was being offered for sale online.

The users of Yahoo’s online services were urged to review accounts for suspicious activity. They were also asked to change passwords. “Online intrusions and thefts by state-sponsored actors have become increasingly common across the technology industry,” Yahoo said in the statement, adding, “Yahoo and other companies have launched programs to detect and notify users when a company strongly suspects that a state-sponsored actor has targeted an account.”

The developments come two months after Yahoo sealed a deal to sell its core internet business to telecom giant Verizon for 4.8 billion dollars, ending a two-decade run as an independent company. It was not immediately clear if the data breach could impact the price agreed to by Verizon.

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US Republicans are pushing new bills through Congress to prevent further return of Iranian money held since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.  Those measures are in response to President Barack Obama’s cash payments to Iran this year following a nuclear accord which requires Washington to lift its sanctions on Tehran.

Iran reportedly received $400 million first in January and another $1.3 billion less than two months later. The total sum of $1.7 billion was related to an arms deal that Iran signed before 1979 but Washington was refusing to give back.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were reportedly flown into Iran in an unmarked cargo plane to cover the first $400 million, while the second payoff was likely made in cash since the US has no banking relationship with Tehran.

Republican lawmakers have now fielded new bills prohibiting any similar payments from the US, the country’s media reports say. A bill introduced by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce to ban future payments to Iran has reportedly attracted 36 co-sponsors and got a date squeezed into the body’s calendar for a vote.

In the Senate, Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced a similar measure which has attracted 20 co-sponsors in just three days, reports said.

In a statement, Rubio hit out at Obama’s “misguided policies,” accusing him of attempting “to appease our enemy with pallets of cash secretly delivered on an unmarked cargo plane.” The senator accused Iran of cheating on the nuclear deal even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) once again confirmed Tehran’s commitment to the accord in a report on Thursday.

Rubio’s bill is reportedly competing with another being pushed by Sen. Bob Corker, the GOP chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.Corker’s bill expands sanctions on Tehran over its ballistic missile program as well as Iran’s support for resistance groups such as Hezbollah. It also requires new sanctions for the transfer of conventional weapons to and from Iran, among other penalties.

According to weekly magazine the Washington Examiner, lawmakers know there’s no chance that Obama will sign the bills into law in the waning days of his time in office but they want to force Democrats up for election in conservative states to take a tough vote on the measure.

The $1.7 billion returned to Iran constitutes a fraction of tens of billions of dollars of the Iranian assets which the US has blocked since the Islamic Revolution. With the nuclear accord reached in February, US courts have scrambled through several cases, allowing American families to claim Iranian assets as compensation for a number of attacks which Tehran says have nothing to do with the country.

In April, the US Supreme Court ruled that Iran’s $2 billion of assets held in an American bank be turned over to families of those killed in a 1983 bombing in Beirut and other attacks. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif denounced the move as “highway robbery” and pledged that Iran would retrieve the sum anyway.

Top Iranian authorities have also rebuked the US for “deception” on the nuclear accord and failing to fulfill its commitments. While Washington has to lift sanctions on Tehran under the accord, it has imposed even more penalties under numerous pretexts.

Last month, Deputy Petroleum Minister for trade and international affairs Amir Hossein Zamaninia said the US was terrorizing the Europeans into shunning business with Iran despite the lifting of sanctions.

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The British oil and gas operator, Victoria Oil & Gas has installed 2500 tons of equipment in Cameroon for the exploitation of the Logbaba gas field.  The UK operator has taken up residence in the economic capital of Douala in view of drilling two gas production wells.

Cameroon Concord News understands work on the wells will begin in the third quarter 2016 (July-September) to be completed by the end of the year. The management of the British group VOG estimated that the two wells are needed to meet the growing demand for gas.

Sama Ernest (Cameroon Concord News)