FCFA 2.5 billion needed for monthly salaries

The State needs about FCFA 15 billion for salaries before the ongoing fiscal year ends.

The 5 per cent salary increase for civil servants decreed by the Head of State on July 7, 2014 as part of measures to cushion the effects of fuel price increase is costing the State an additional FCFA 2.5 billion per month.

Sources at the Ministry of Finance say the salary increase which is already effective as from the July payout is evaluated at FCFA 30 billion per annum.But given that the measure took effect almost half way gone into the 2014 fiscal year, additional FCFA 15 billion will be spent on it between July and December when the financial year ends.

Information from an ad hoc committee created in the Ministry of Finance to prepare texts of application for the salary increase indicates that the operation moved what the State hitherto spent on salaries from FCFA 65,712,384,912 at the end of June to FCFA 67,925,344,975 at the end of July.

In an interview Finance Minister, Alamine Ousmane Mey, granted Cameroon Tribune when the presidential decree was signed; all is being done at the level of mobilising revenue to sustain the measure.

He said for success, there will be need to uphold budgetary stringency which seeks to engender discipline in State expenditure engaged some years back with the advent of the results-based programme budget.