Minister worried over low industrial dev’t

The Minister of Mines, Industry and Technological Development, Emmanuel Bonde, has expressed concern over the low and stagnating nature of Cameroon’s manufacturing industry sector. He was speaking in Yaounde on July 23 at the start of a two-day workshop to validate a national strategy for the promotion of investments in Cameroon.

Revisiting the growth and employment strategy paper which projects that Cameroon would attain the status of an industrial country by 2035 with export of manufactured goods occupying an important position in the country’s external trade, the Minister observed that despite the good intentions, the sector is still struggling to find its feet.

Bonde talked of measures to encourage private investments and cited the current construction of a number of HEP dams, gas plants, transport infrastructure with the key being the announced extension of the railway line, the near completion of the Kribi deep seaport, etc, noting that those are visible efforts being made by government. He said despite these efforts coupled with the country’s economic policy and industrial strategies, progress in the sector is still largely insufficient.

The Minister noted that going by the projections of the growth and employment strategy paper, manufactured goods are supposed to constitute 23 to 24 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. “For over a decade, the position of the manufacturing sector in the gross domestic product has virtually remained unchanged at a staggering 11 percent, far from the projected 23 to 24 percent,” Bonde stated.

He observed that the growth rate in the manufacturing industry sector is stagnating and since 2009, it has remained around 5 percent on the average per year. Bonde however said in the domain of extractive industries, the growth rate moved from 3.5 percent in 2008 to 4.5 percent in 2013 thus registering a little progress despite the enormous mining potentials of the country.

Describing the situation as less encouraging, the Minister said it is as a result of a combination of factors including the business environment which is less attractive to investors. “Despite the macro-economic and structural reforms engaged in the last decades, Cameroon’s capacity to attract private investments has remained a major pre-occupation for the government. In 2013 from example, direct foreign investment flows witnessed a global progress of 10.9 percent of this figure, Cameroon received only 0.01 percent representing about FCFA 250 billion,” the Minister disclosed.

In the face of the disturbing situation, according to the Minister, government took measures both judicial and institutional to reverse the current trend. He said apart from putting in place laws that encourage private investments, an agency for the promotion of investments has also been created.

Bonde noted that for the actions to be operational, an appropriate national strategy that would boost investments is therefore necessary. He recalled that in that light, a situational study on the promotion of investments in Cameroon was carried out last year and the content of the proposed strategy that was validated at the end of the workshop is the result of the said study.

It should be noted that the Agency for the Promotion of Investments created in 2005, is anticipated to contribute to the elaboration and putting in place of government policy in the domain of promotion of investment in Cameroon.