Sonamines Reports First Profit, Driven by Mining Levies

The first profit in the history of Cameroon’s National Mining Corporation (Sonamines) rests on revenues that far exceed those generated by its commercial operations. In 2025, the state-owned company recorded CFA2.95 billion in income from mining levies, while its sales totaled just CFA30.55 million. The gap helps explain the CFA724.7 million net profit announced in June 2026, after a CFA1.86 billion loss a year earlier. According to Note 21 of the financial statements, the CFA2.945 billion appears under “other income,” a category that recorded no amount in 2024. It accounted for nearly 99% of the CFA2.976 billion combined total of sales and other income for the year. On its own, the amount was more than 96 times Sonamines’ sales. The disparity shows that the turnaround in Sonamines’ earnings came primarily from resources tied to mining taxation rather than growth in commercial activity. For comparison, without this income and with all other factors unchanged, the reported profit would have become a theoretical deficit of CFA2.22 billion. <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: arial, helvetica, ...