Cameroon Airlines Corporation celebrates its three years of activity with 14 billion FCfa in debt

On March 28, 2014, Cameroon Airlines Corporation (Camair Co), Cameroon’s national airline, will celebrate its third anniversary since being created by presidential decree on September 11, 2006.

This celebration, however, comes at a time marred by financial difficulty as the public company, according to authorised sources, has an accumulated debt of 14 billion FCfa. The company’s new management, in place since October 2013, has been trying to absorb this debt for six months now through restructuring aimed at reducing the company’s expenses. It is to this end that company heads announced the general management’s return to the company’s headquarters to share the high rent which previously gobbled up 200 million FCfa per annum.

At the same time, the company has just signed a contract with Tradex, a public oil company, to supply kerosene to bring its expenditure on fuel and lubricant to the standard 30% of operational costs as opposed to 50% as it was with its previous partner. The maintenance of the company’s three aircrafts is now provided by Ethiopian Airlines instead of Lufthansa whose bills have, on more than one occasion, been described as stifling by labour unions.

These structural reforms have enabled the company to distance itself from the spectacle of its aircrafts being seized in international airports for non-payment of bills to partners, but also allows it to remain in service. It is for this reason that Frédéric Mbotto Edimo, Camair Co.’s Managing Director, stated in an interview with the government’s daily paper that “between October and December 2013, the company transported 89,857 passengers, which works out to be 11,906 passengers in absolute value and 15% in relative value.”