The Minister of Finance, Louis Paul Motaze on July 24 granted an audience to Makonnen Asmaron, President of the PICCINI Group, the Italian multinational construction company charged with constructing the Olembe stadium. The purpose of the audience was the signing of a surety-bond agreement that will help PICCINI obtain financing from local banks to accelerate construction works on the stadium on the outskirts of Yaounde.
“Discussions are quite advanced with local banks in that regard. Today’s visit will allow for quicker advances towards the finalization of these works,” Louis Paul Motaze stated.
According to Makonnen Asmaron, the audience was to reassure the Minister that work will be completed before the end of 2019.
“We wanted to reassure the Minister that we would complete the works before the end of this year. We have made up for the wasted times. We also reassure Cameroonians that they will have stadiums better than those seen around Africa and probably in the world,” Makonnen Asmaron said.
Before the audience with the Finance boss, the group’s chief executive, who has been on a working visit to Cameroon since July 23, 2019, had a working session at the Prime Minister’s Office where both parties evaluated the level of advancement of works and the execution of the convention of funding for the acceleration of constructions work at the Olembe Sport Complex, one of the sites to host the 2021 African Cup of Nations to be organized by Cameroon.
In preparation for AFCON 2019 (whose organization was withdrawn from Cameroon), PICCINI was commissioned to build a sports complex hosting a 60,000 seater stadium in Olembe for FCFA 163 billion.
Since the withdrawal of AFCON 2019 from Cameroon on November 30, 2018, the Olembe shipyard has been abandoned for months. There were repeated strikes by the workers demanding the payment of their salary arrears. The project, launched in March 2017, was expected to be delivered at the end of September that same year but it has not been completed to-date.