Rebels impose ban on imported products

The ‘New Forces’ rebel movement has imposed an import ban on certain types of food and drink in order to promote economic activity in the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire which it controls, rebel leaders said. The head of the rebels’ economic recovery unit, Dramane Kone, told IRIN at his headquarters in Bouake, central Cote d’Ivoire last week, that the ban applied to items such as cooking oil, rice, sugar, beer, soft drinks and cigarettes. “The Secretary General of the New Forces has signed a decree ending the import of certain food products. The aim is to allow the various companies and businesses in our areas to continue their activity and to survive,” Kone told IRIN. According to Kone, New Forces leader Secretary General Guillaume Soro, took the decision to impose the ban earlier this month. The New Forces have controlled the northern half of the country since staging a rebellion in September 2002. In Bouake and Korhogo, the second largest city in rebel territory 300km to the north, goods imported from Guinea, Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Togo are sold more cheaply in local markets than Ivorian-produced beer, soft drinks and fruit. “The imported goods are cheaper than those made in the country, and with the poor financial situation, consumers prefer what’s better for their pocket”, Kone acknowledged. Business owners told IRIN that they had been forced to look elsewhere for goods after traditional trade routes between Abidjan and the rebel-controlled areas were closed following the partition of the country. Although road transport across the frontline resumed more than a year ago, drivers are forced to pay a large number of fees or bribes to roadblocks set up by both government and rebel forces throughout the country. One transport industry source said a truck driver travelling the 700 km from Abidjan to Korhogo would normally have to pay several hundred dollars in bribes or unofficial taxes to both government and rebel road blocks along the way. This has dramatically increased transportation costs, making goods much more expensive to the consumer by the time they hit the market. Some shop-owners said trading with neighbouring countries had always been part of business. But they admitted that the two-year old partition of the country had boosted cross-border trade. “I buy some goods from Abidjan, I buy some from neighbouring countries,” a Moroccan business owner, who left Abidjan for Korhogo a year ago, told IRIN. He paused for a moment, before adding: “More from neighbouring countries than from Abidjan.” SITAB, the Ivorian tobacco company, is one of the big businesses competing with a cheaper cigarette from Guinea called “London”. “We don’t sell in the rebel areas because people prefer cigarettes from Guinea such as ‘London’. It’s in government-controlled areas where we do our business,” Soumaila Traore, part of the skeleton staff that is still working for SITAB in Bouake, told IRIN. SITAB, The Ivorian Company for Textile Development (CIDT), the oil and soap-manufacturer TRITURAF and FIBACO, which manufactured plastic goods, were among the biggest companies operating in the Bouake area. Their factories once employed thousands, but they now stand closed. The New Forces created the economic recovery unit to map out ways to help hundreds of small and large businesses to resume activity in the rebel-held north, where banks and most schools and health centres remain closed. Residents in Bouake said the import restrictions imposed by the rebel authorities had yet to affect the price of goods in local markets, where plenty of imported items were still available. But many residents expressed concern at the ban, the first trade controls to be formally imposed in the rebel area of Cote d'Ivoire. “I’m are very worried. It is by selling these imported goods that I scrape by. I am only able to feed my family by selling these cigarettes”, said Traore Bamory, a petty trader, pointing to the cigarettes laid out in his kiosk on the main road. Bamory said he earned about US $20 per day, far less than what he made prior to the outbreak of civil war. The fighting stopped in May last year, but since then Cote d'Ivoire has lived in a strained state of no war, no peace, marred by frequent incidents of politically-motivated violence in both the government and rebel areas of the country. “You know that the population is fed up of this crisis,” Bamory said. Charles Sani, a retired school teacher, spoke for many when he explained that the quality and origin of goods was no longer important in a situation where money was always in short supply. “We buy what we can afford, regardless of where it comes from," he said. Even in peace times, not everything we bought was produced or manufactured in Cote d’Ivoire. If the rebels insist on these rules, they will make enemies,” he predicted.