Cameroon: Improving Nation’s Investment Climate

Prime Minister Philemon Yang chaired the third session of the Cameroon Business Forum on Monday.

Some 200 participants from the public and private sectors, international funding organizations, and civil society organizations exchanged knowledge with the view of improving the business climate in Cameroon during the 2012 session of the Cameroon Business Forum (CBF) in Douala yesterday, March 5, 2012. Christened “Investing in a simplified environment”, the main objective of the forum facilitated by the International Finance Corporation with the support of the African Development Bank and the World Bank, was to present the level of implementation of the 48 recommendations made during the last two sessions, as well as examine new orientations put in place to encourage entrepreneurship in Cameroon.

Speaking at the opening ceremony at the Sawa Hotel, the Prime Minister, Philemon Yang, said Cameroon’s shift to two places ahead on the Doing Business 2012 ranking means government now is moving towards transparency and more commercial rights. He pointed out that most distracting factor is lack of branding. Efforts to improve the business environment remain largely unknown not only to the international community but also Cameroonians.

Since the institution of the first Cameroon Business Forum in 2009, significant achievements have been made. Although these achievements primarily concern some recommendations of the 2010 and 2011 forums, the crux of the public-private platform – creating an internal environment easy for doing business – remained largely unresolved. This provoked questions during plenary discussions yesterday, some of which are yet to be fully resolved. A balanced sheet of the forum since its creation in 2009, points to the adoption of measures to simplify tax procedures and the reduction of the time limit for several transactions as well as the creation of one-stop shop for the creation of firms.

Coming shortly after the publication of Doing Business 2012 classification, which places Cameroon at 168th position out of 183 countries, with a marked improvement of 12 places compared to the last two sessions of the forum, shows that the country is on a positive trail. Speaking during the opening ceremony, the President of the Cameroon Chamber of Commerce, Christophe Eken, expressed the need for more efforts to meet the 2035 vision of making Cameroon an emerging economy. He said 37 of recommendations of the last session have been carried out, 2 of the 3 recommendations on private sector have been fully executed. Nine of the 15 priority recommendations have been attained, 35 of the 48 recommendations are about to be finalized placing total execution at 73 per cent, as against 58 per cent by June 2011.