Cameroon: Overdue rhetoric

The question on every lip is certainly why things are changing so slowly since the Cameroon Business Forum (CBF) was created to take over from the Inter-ministerial Committee Extended to the Private Sector.

In effect, when the CBF was created with the objective of enhancing public-private sector dialogue, many people wanted to know what direction things that remained unchanged under the previous structure will take.

The forum enters its seventh edition today in the commercial capital of Douala still with the atmosphere heavily charged with uncertainly to a certain degree. This is surely a disturbing situation especially as the urge towards cleansing the business environment keeps rising. The interesting thing about the CBF is the convergence of views during each forum that translates a semblance of dialogue.

But once the confab is over, many of the reforms agreed upon seem to be pushed under the carpet. Christopher Eken, President of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Craft confirmed inter alia during the sixth forum that there is dialogue in Cameroon between the public and private sectors. To go by his declaration, there have been over 300 recommendations since the CBF was instituted and 150 of them have been implemented. This surely is a big leap if one were to look at things from the political angle but a bit disappointing from the business point of view.