Over 41% increase in outstanding receivables for banks in the CEMAC

During the last meeting organised a few days ago in Cameroon by the Central African Banking Commission (COBAC), with the managers of commercial banks operating in the six countries in the CEMAC zone (Cameroon, Congo, Gabon, CAR, Chad and Equatorial Guinea), it came out that outstanding receivables saw an increase of 41.6% as at end July 2016, “thus degrading the apparent quality of the credit portfolio”.

According to the analysis made by COBAC, the watchdog in the banking sector within the Central African States Community (CEMAC), this increase in the outstanding loans is due to “the significant increase in long term receivables and doubtful accounts”.

In absolute value, these outstanding receivables had already reached the sum of FCfa 894 billion as at end March 2015, thus approximately 11.8% of the gross loans granted over this period by all the banking institutions (about 50) in this community.