Poverty reduction: World Financial bodies determine to help Cameroon

By Yemti Harry Ndienla

Though Cameroon is so reluctant to implementing decisions of some international bodies, others have expressed their determination to help to continue designing and implementing good policies that will accelerate growth and fight against poverty in the nation considered one of the poorest and most corrupt in the world. The move which government authorities say will go a long way to boosting the country's new poverty reduction and growth programme, was made by Dhaneshwar Ghura,who lead a joint International Monetary Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank review mission to Cameroon, recently.

The new poverty reduction plan is expected to be ready by the end of 2008 thus the team were in Cameroon for a two-week review of the country’s three-year programme supported by the IMF under the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF). The review period, which is the sixth and last conducted by the team ran from January through June 2008

“Growth started picking up in 2007 and is expected to continue. This year, it is expected that growth in the non-oil sector will reach 4.6 percent”, said the team leader. Adding, “We are very pleased the emergency measures that were put in place in March and April 2008 to attenuate the impact of rising fuel and food prices have started to have a positive impact on the population, economy and purchasing power”.

Though Ghura is on the opinion that a lot of progress has been made in reinforcing public finance management, revenue mobilisation, use of this revenue for poverty reduction and growth, opinion leaders believe very little has been done owing to the fact that the country is still corrupt and rank high in bad governance. However, Dhaneshwar Ghura, emphasized the role of the IMF which he said is to help government strengthen growth and further reduce poverty in a budgetary and macro-economic framework that ensures that the spending is compatible with the resources and that within the spending, the larger share is spent in priority aspects.

On the other hand the mission also touched on other issues such as the 2009 annual budget which to the head of the delegation, is expected to ensure the boosting of investment in energy and agricultural sectors among others.