The Minister of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries (MINEPIA), Dr Taïga, has challenged managers of the Livestock Development Fund for the North (CDEN) and Maritime Artisanal Fishing Development Mission (MIDEPECAM) to redouble their efforts to boost livestock and fisheries products in the country. The Minister was speaking on Monday December 30 while chairing separate budgetary sessions of the two institutions in Yaounde.

For CDEN, FCFA 437,920, 000 was voted to pilot three programmes for the development of livestock in the northern part of the country among which is the putting in place of livestock infrastructure. This will consists in constructing some eight compartments for the Wakwa zootechnical technical station and four water points in the three northern regions, among others.

According to the Director of CDEN, Dr. Djibrine Mahamat, efforts will also be stepped up to ensure surveillance against animal diseases. CDEN is an agency of MINEPIA created since August 1966 to assist government in collecting revenue from livestock activities and also assisting breeders to boost production. Meanwhile, Minister Taïga noted that MIDEPECAM with the objective to give technical and logistics support to artisanal fisherman through the construction of fishing equipment and their maintenance will not spare any effort to boost the activity so that fish importation that drains the State of huge FCFA could reduce.