Cameroon wins best online business registration award

Cameroon has been classified as the best country in online business (E-Business) registration by the Global Entrepreneurship Network. The country was presented with the award last week in Nairobi, Kenya, during the World Economic Forum where Cameroon was represented by the Minister of Small and Medium Size Enterprises, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa.

In presenting the award to the Prime Minister, Philemon Yang, Tuesday, July 26, Etoundi Ngoa said Cameroon scored 7/10 points and emerged first out of 18 countries tested. To the Minister, this award comes to confirm the fact that Cameroon is moving ahead in its doing business program.

The Global Entrepreneurship Network recognizes the fact that the online registration launched some six months ago in three major towns of Cameroon notably; Yaoundé, Douala and Garoua is a huge success. In those three towns an enterprise can be registered online by a simply click on www.mybusiness.cm

The Award is a product of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) with the assistance of the office of the United States Under Secretary of State in charge of Economic Development that went down to the field to confirm the reality of all these projects.

The Award that is presented every year has a global coverage and involves two categories; that of e-regulation which was won by Bhutan and e-registration won by Cameroon.

However good it may sound on paper and the airwaves, the reality on the ground is still a cloudy one especially in a country where internet connections are still very slow with some pages of government Ministries very difficult to access.

Going through the website www.mybusiness.cm, one realizes that most of the information there is in French with just the home page in both French and English.

If it is not difficult internet access, business men in Cameroon are still faced with the bureaucratic bottlenecks at all levels coupled with wanton taxes that leave the businessmen at the mercy of taxation officers. This is further strengthened by the perennial phenomenon of poor customer service at government offices.