DOUALA: Cameroon’s association of millers has suspended deliveries of flour and wheat bran throughout the country due to the rising price of wheat, it said in a statement.

The association represents 70% of the market for flour production in Cameroon, said the statement dated Tuesday.

“This measure taken reluctantly aims to limit the scope of losses that these companies have been recording for three months because of the uninterrupted and unprecedented increase in the price of wheat, their raw material, and insufficient measures from the public authorities to help them acquire it,” it said.

Cameroon’s minister of commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

International wheat prices climbed to their highest in almost a decade late last year after poor harvests in North America squeezed availability of milling-grade crop.

Wheat has contributed to a rise in global food prices to a 10-year high, according to the UN’s food agency, which has warned that importing countries are facing a record food bill.

However, global wheat prices have fallen since last month. Southern hemisphere harvests have eased supply tensions while fears have waned about potential disruption to Black Sea exports due to a standoff between Russia and the West over Ukraine.

Flour prices have risen so much since October that some bakers in Cameroon have stopped making bread, said Jean Claude Yiepmou Kapwa, president of the national bakers’ syndicate.