Stakeholders are fine-tuning a draft plan for validation in a workshop which began on July 23, 2014 in Yaounde.

Cameroon could in the days ahead boast of a coordinated investment promotion strategy through which all stakeholders could work to step up direct foreign investment absolutely needed for the country’s long-term growth vision. A draft sector-by-sector strategy document for investment promotion is under scrutiny in a workshop that the Minister of Industry, Mines and Technological Development, Emmanuel Bonde, opened in Yaounde yesterday July 23 in the company of his counterpart of the Small and Medium-size Enterprises, Social Economy and Handicrafts, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa.

The draft strategy under examination has been conceived by the Investment Promotion Agency (IPA) with technical expertise from an independent firm. The ongoing workshop bringing together all the stakeholders seeks to allow them (government ministries and the private sector) to jointly look at the document, enrich and endorse it for onward transmission to government authorities for approval and then full implementation by all.

The document comprises one on a situational analysis of investment promotion in the country and the second on what could be done to maximize the investment potentials so as to attract viable and sustainable investments. The workshop participants are examining the proposals.

Speaking during the workshop, Minister Emmanuel Bonde said Cameroon’s economic emergence depends largely on a vibrant industrial sector bolstered by viable investment. He disclosed that the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper (GESP) targets a 24 per cent contribution of the manufactured sector to the Gross Domestic Product up from the current 11 per cent.

With this, growth rate in the sector stagnates at averagely 5 per cent per annum whereas growth in the extractive industrial sector is in the neigbourhood of 4.5 per cent. All performances which Minister Bonde said are below expectation and could only be altered by good investment which must be fruit of coordinated and harmonious investment promotion plans.

As if to demonstrate how bad a total lack of an investment promotion strategy is detrimental to Cameroon, the Minister disclosed that in 2013, direct foreign investment flows progressed to 10.9 per cent globally but Cameroon only received 0.01 per cent representing FCFA 250 billion. Institutional and legal instruments in place, he said, must be accompanied by a uniform investment promotion strategy which serves as a guide for all stakeholders.  

Like the Minister, the Director General of IPA, Marthe Angeline Minja, said the GESP proposes that sector-by-sector strategies should be put in place in order to promote investments. She, like her deputy, Donatus Boma, noted that because of the hitherto cacophony that has been taking place in the investment promotion sector, there was need to come up with a coordinated investment promotion strategy which will not permit anybody to do what he or she wants.