REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON Paix-Travail-Patrie SERVICES DU PREMIER MINISTRE SECRETARIAT GENERAL
REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON Peace-Work-Fatherland PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE SECRETARIAT GENERAL
PRESS RELEASE FOLLOWING CABINET MEETING OF THURSDAY 23 JANUARY 2020
Yaounde, 23 January 2020
The Prime Minister, Head of Government, His Excellency Joseph DION NGUTE, today Thursday 23 January 2020 as from 10:00 a.m. chaired the Cabinet Meeting for the current month in the Prime Minister’s Office, which was attended by Ministers of State, Ministers, Ministers-Delegate and Secretaries of State.
Three items featured on the agenda:
- Statement by the Minister of Finance on “rationalising contributions paid to international organisations”;
- Report from the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications on “the implementation of directives concerning the development of electronic communications in Cameroon”;
- Report from the Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development on “updating the industrialisation master plan”.
Invited to take the floor at the end of the introductory statement of the Head of Government, the Minister of Finance indicated at the outset that Cameroon’s membership to International Organisations makes it possible to establish a range of relations with other States sharing the same strategic, political, economic and social development objectives. He then gave an overview of the situation, before presenting the rationalization measures recommended for the reorganization of the portfolio of international organizations to which Cameroon is a member.
In the overview, the Minister of Finance said that the volume of Cameroon’s contributions to international organizations has increased considerably over the past decades and stands at CFAF 10 billion on average annually for 196 international organizations listed. The main constraints inherent in the payment of contributions due to international organizations relate in particular to the absence of data on bank domiciliation and the location of certain beneficiary organizations, as well as the late communication of information on changes in the amounts of statutory contributions by the legislative bodies of these organizations.
In order to control expenditure relating to the contributions paid by Cameroon to international bodies, the Minister of Finance said that a management mechanism comprising short- and medium-term measures has been put in place. The creation and operationalization in July 2019 of the permanent joint MINFI/MINREX platform in charge of monitoring and evaluating the State’s contributions to international organizations is the backbone of this mechanism. In the long run, it is planned, among other things, to regularly update the list of international organisations to whose budgets Cameroon contributes, to draw up a three-year programme of State commitments in respect of its contributions to international bodies and to define a reference framework for analysing the sustainability of the State’s financial commitments to international organisations.