Internal and external sources have surpassed projections fetching additional FCFA 286.3 billion for government coffers.

Going by the mid-term evaluation of the 2014 State budget, the country’s performance is on a sound footing, at least for revenue collection. According to the performance report published by the Ministry of Finance, internal and external revenue sources fetched FCFA 1,716.4 billion into the State treasury as at June 31, 2014. This represents an additional revenue collection of FCFA 286.3 billion given that FCFA 1,577.3 billion was initially projected to be raised during the period. The performance represents a 20 per cent improvement from the same period last year when FCFA 1,430.1 billion was raised.

What Justifies The Strides?

The mid-term performance report attributes the positive improvement to strides in internal and external revenue sources which have witnessed an 18.5 per cent and 27.3, per cent increase respectively vis-à-vis the same period last year. Of the FCFA 1,716.4 billion revenue collected in the first six months of 2014, records show that FCFA 1,396 billion came from internal sources (taxes and customs duties), representing an increase of FCFA 59.7 billion from what was initially projected. Meanwhile, external revenue sources (loans, gifts…) raised FCFA 320.4 billion up from the initial projections of FCFA 241 billion.  

With regards to internal sources, the report shows an encouraging performance of the customs and taxation services thus far. The taxation department for instance, has had a 111.8 per cent performance; fetching FCFA 734.7 billion as at June 31 up from the projected FCFA 657 billion. Target is to collect at least FCFA 1,240 billion at year’s end. Whereas, the customs department has collected FCFA 327 billion, representing a 103.5 per cent performance from the FCFA 316 billion projected when the year began. Its assigned tasked is to fetch FCFA 638 billion for the current fiscal year.

Expenditure Rate, Expectations

The State, the report states, had initially planned to spend FCFA 1,603 billion for the first six months. By June 31, the expenditure level stood FCFA 1,592.2 billion representing a 99.3 per cent executing rate. It emerges from the mid-term 2014 report that of the expenditure performance, investments have had a 106.2 per cent rate while the daily functioning of public structures (running cost) has been executed to the tune of 96.9 per cent.

The performance of the first six months of the year rekindles hopes that set priorities at the beginning of the year with focus on boosting infrastructure development to trigger growth and curb poverty to acceptable levels could be attainable. Should the revenue collection be commensurate with execution of public investment projects across the country, then, the targeted economic growth rate of 5.9 per cent as projected by Cameroon’s Financial and Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) could be attained.