The implementation of planning policies always responds to a set of sometimes unrealizable challenges given the economic situation of a country which struggles to provide satisfactory living conditions to a population which always demands more from those who govern her. Indeed, over time needs increase; the problems accumulate and the solutions provided to respond effectively to these constant concerns are not always sufficient because the State and in particular its leaders do not always have the means for their policy. If the intentions are appreciable at the same time as being very relevant, their achievements require financing which we do not always have despite the support of national investors and other foreign partners whose contributions are always very useful in a global economic circuit governed by strategic interests which always amount to several millions and billions of euros or dollars.
Cameroonian economy: the realities of a context
It is not always and only through friendship that a State, through the voice of its representatives approaches another. Everything is always motivated by common interests which also involve contracting loans for the implementation of public policies in addition to the budget or the “document established by the government and voted by parliament which provides for and defines the expenditure and revenue that the State has the right to commit and collect for the coming year” and whose starting capital always comes from populations, businesses and other partners. If in fact this budget is expected to evolve over time, it will not always make it possible to resolve all the problems and the State will always be obliged to go into debt each year so that, failing to satisfy the expectations of the Cameroonians while avoiding as much as possible over-indebtedness, the implementation and effective and above all efficient completion of priority projects is satisfactory. This is the reason why public spending’s from previous years' revenues are always oriented towards productive and priority sectors in order to reduce the poverty rate as much as possible because for various reasons and sometimes dependent on human will, not all problems can always be resolved in a timely manner because depending on the context, the evolution of time implies more capital, more investments, more populations willing to work, less qualified labour, and a larger budget than in previous years. A budget which would have been very satisfactory in particular at the beginning of the 2000s, but which currently remains very unsatisfactory to the point of always requiring compulsory borrowing which can accumulate over time and take a worrying turn which can leads one to wonder if over time we have rather regressed instead of progressed.
But it turns out that over time the challenges are not the same. If in the thirty decades following independence Cameroon's economy was growing thanks in particular to the existence of several flourishing public companies until the devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994, the years which followed were years of rehabilitation, gradual recovery of the economy through policies imposed by international financial bodies, the increase in external debt, broken promises, the fight against corruption which has become a norm and other strategic plans for development the first phase of which ended in failure given that the objectives were not all achieved, namely: increasing the growth rate to 5.5% on average from 2010 to 2020, reduce underemployment from 75% to less than 50% in 2020, and reduce the monetary poverty rate from 39.9% in 2007 to 28.7% in 2020. From 2011 to 2020, the annual growth of Cameroon's gross domestic product varied between 0.26% and 6% with an increase from 2011 to 2013 going from 3.38%, 4.63% and 5% in 2013, and with a regression from 2014 to 2020, going from 5.72%, 5.67%, 4.54%, 3.54%, 3.96%, 3.48%, to 0.26% according to a source from the World Bank relayed by the team perspective monde. Regarding employment, the third survey on employment and the informal sector published in 2022 specifies that: “Despite the efforts undertaken, the resilience of the Cameroonian economy has been accompanied by a deterioration in underemployment overall. » And with regard to the poverty rate, we were interested in the percentage of the population living on less than a dollar per day. And according to the World Bank, this rate would have fallen from 31.40% in 2007 to 23% in 2021. Since the end of 2019 with the end of the implementation of planning on growth and employment, the unemployment rate in Cameroon has grown. The second survey on employment and the informal sector (EESI2) already estimated the workforce available to work and looking for formal employment that they cannot find at more than 70% in 2014. And as a measure adaptation a good majority of those who do not have formal employment find themselves in the informal sector which contributes greatly to the country's gross domestic product (GDP).
We wonder why the second phase when the first has not been completely achieved. The report of the third survey on employment and the informal sector (EESI3) responds by saying that the national development strategy or SND 30 was developed based on the lessons learned from the DSCE.
Instead of moving on to SND 30, perhaps we should have repeated the first phase so as not to saturate the second with objectives which could not be completely achieved and which make us walk with a limp towards an emergence which has strong probability to remain an abstract reality unless we change the definition of the notion of emerging economy. How can we become an emerging economy when even priority projects have difficulty seeing the light of day, not only because of budgetary constraints and other bad weather problems, but because of poor execution of them? How can we become so when instead of doing everything possible so that one or more objectives are truly achieved, we still make the choice to move forward because we must be faithful to a second well-constituted planning both on the plan of the substance than of the form? And it is an old Cameroonian habit which keeps the country in a precarious situation which did not come from heaven but which we ourselves created. At the same time as we set priorities that we fail to achieve in a timely manner, other priorities on which we do not particularly focus contribute to further deterioration of the living conditions of prison populations in environments where overcrowding is at least 300%. These are realities which are part of the hidden side of the great ambitions and great achievements which certainly have the merit of having brought something to the Cameroonian people, it must be recognized, but the living conditions of the prison populations in particular have deteriorated with time. These reintegration centres have taken on the appearance of reformatories where those who have no money are left to their own devices.
