Cameroon ranked most indebted country in Francophone Africa

A report by the World Bank and the IMF says Cameroon currently is the most indebted country in francophone Africa with an estimated public debt rate over 8%.

The report released by the global financial bodies, also indicates that Cameroon has an accrued external debt hitting 5, 289 million US dollars and is ranked 10th among 42 African nations whose debt statistics were studied in 2016.

The ranking of the Bretton woods institutions also tags Cameroon as one of the most indebted countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Cumulative debts incurred by sub-Saharan African countries as at 2016, as per the report, amounts to over 402 billion US dollars.

Cameroon, it should be noted, is currently engaged in the execution of some giant development projects across the country, some of which are said to be sponsored with money borrowed in the form of soft loans from international development organisations and financial institutions.

The international debt statistics group of the World Bank, which released the annual report, seeks to respond to user demand for timely and comprehensive data on trends in external debts in low and middle income countries across the world.

The 2016 report prefaced by Haishan Fu, director of development data group of the World Bank focuses on financial flows, trends in external debt, and other major financial indicators for low, middle, and high-income countries.

The report further précised that for operational and analytical purposes, the World Bank’s main criterion for classifying countries was gross national income (GNI) per capita calculated as per the World Bank Atlas method.

The 2016 report comes at a time an envoy of a recent IMF mission to Gabon and Cameroon, Mario de zamarockzy, cautioned officials of central Africa states to cut excessive spending, given the hard punches the fight against Boko Haram and the slump in global oil prices were inflicting on the economies of their countries.

This is also not the first time the World Bank and IMF are raising concerns about Cameroon’s spiraling public debts which they fear could push the country back to the rank of “Heavily-Indebted Poor countries.”

“Cameroon spends more than it earns. Incurring huge debts is inevitable in such a situation,” an IMF official is quoted as saying at a press conference in Yaounde two years ago.

It should be noted that the World Bank has always cautioned member-countries on the principles of good debt management which they hold is essential to economic development.

The World Bank is also known to help ensure that developing countries’ debt burdens don’t overwhelm their ability to reduce poverty or provide essential government functions.

The body’s debt experts usually oversee debt relief, advise countries on how to structure and schedule debt, as well as help countries fit their debt into sustainable fiscal planning that favours growth.