Mincom proposes a trust account for private media

This is the announcement that was made by the Minister of communications at the press conference he gave Thursday, October 30, 2014 in Yaoundé.

It appears that the low impact of the system of public aid currently in force, was relatively due to the limited nature of the budget devoted to this aid, rather than to the structure or the criteria for granting the aid itself", said Issa Tchiroma, Minister of Communication.

To resolve this situation, Mincom has considered it important to establish a trust account. He therefore envisaged to think of a mutation to help the current system in setting up an account of trust for the development of privately owned media, powered by resources generated by the sector of communication itself; from activities with high potential profitability.

This special allocation account, which will be established to run in the year 2015, will increase the insignificant aid currently granted to the press in Cameroon.

Between 2001 and 2014, 900 beneficiaries in the sector of the private communication, received 385 million CFA francs allocated for this purpose. In 12 fiscal years therefore, each beneficiary would have received $ 2 million 700 thousand francs, or 225 000 Fcfa per year and per beneficiary, which really is inadequate.

Funds should in principle be used as subsidy for the acquisition of professional equipment, for financial assistance to the production of quality information, for the purchase of essential inputs used in the manufacture of newspapers, related costs inherent in journalistic work, a financial allocation for the coverage of major national and international events also the Distributor discount and the return of unsold subsidy.

For the latter, in capacity-building, the assistance was for continuing education, either for participation in recycling and advanced courses, participation in national and international seminars and conferences. So obviously, the said sum cannot in no case be sufficient for such projects.

However, he Mincom argues that the problem does not lie in the plethora of publications. At the end of the deliberations, 167 communication structures were retained, and 42 records have been rejected for this year.

Thus the retained include, 71 written press organs were retained, 11 commercial radios, 42 community radios, 5 TV channels, 3 audio-visual producers, 6 printing, 29 professional organizations.

Even if the problem stemmed from the selection criteria and the plethora of bodies, Mincom nevertheless plans to improve the eligibility criteria for access to the benefit of the aid granted.