Yaounde-Kribi road to gulp-up another FCFA 64 billion

The Government of Cameroon is in search of FCFA 64 billion to complete the tarring of the remaining 78 km stretch of the Bingambo–Kribi road.

The information was made public in Yaounde on December 3, during a roundtable discussion that brought together officials of the Ministries of Economy, Planning and Regional Development, MINEPAT, and Public Works, on the one hand, and the Islamic World, on the other.

Opening deliberations, the MINEPAT Boss, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, hailed the presence of representatives of banks in the Islamic World recalling that the economic crisis that hit Cameroon in the 1980s seriously affected the infrastructure development sector.

He said, after the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, the Government formulated an economic development vision imbued in the Growth and Employment Strategy Paper, GESP, with the goal of modernising the economy and accelerating growth.

Minister Nganou stated that in Cameroon, the road is a mode of communication par excellence, accounting for more than 85 percent of the transportation needs of passengers and goods.

“Meanwhile, the poor state of the communication mode influences access to basic infrastructure such as markets, schools and health centres. Considering this, the policy of Government in matters of transportation aims at progressively eliminating the rigidities and dysfunction of the sector whose negative effects is reflected in the rising cost of transportation,” Nganou maintained.

“Government intends to increase the network of tarred roads to seven percent between now and 2020; rehabilitate 200km of tarred road per year as well as paying adequate attention to the rehabilitation of earth roads. It is in this light that many road projects have seen the light of day these last years,” the Minister declared.

The 261km Yaounde–Kribi road, which is “Provincial” road No 18, runs through Mfoundi; Mefou & Akono; Nyong & So’o Divisions of the Centre Region and Ocean Division in the South Region. According to the Minister, these Divisions, with an approximate population of over 2.2 million people following 2010 statistics, constitute highly agro-pastoral zones.

Nganou told the donors that the road would link Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, with the Kribi Deep Seaport passing through the urban centres of Ngoumou, Akono, Ngomedzap, Mvengue, Bipindi and Lolodorf.

“The Yaounde–Kribi road is subdivided into three lots with the first Yaounde–Olama, already constructed. Lot two, which is the Olama–Bingambo stretch, was subject of the signing of a loan agreement between the Government of Cameroon and the Islamic Bank for Development,” he noted further.

Presenting the technical aspects of the project, the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Public Works, Hans Nyetam Nyetam, said, in addition to the road, a number of bridges would be built and toll gates, weighing stations, parking lots would be constructed in transit urban centres.

He outlined the benefits of the project to include easy access by economic operators to the Kribi Deep Seaport, provision of social amenities along the stretch of the road and the boosting of tourism in the seaside resort town of Kribi.

Apart from some technicalities that would be ironed out, the donor institutions, to a larger extent, expressed their desire to provide funding for the project. The representative of the Saudi Fund for Development remarked that since the funding of an HEP Dam Project in Cameroon in 1977, the bank has since been accompanying the country in its development endeavours.