Business

Employment experts from Argentina have said unemployment is a forest of complexities and is easily overcomed when two heads are put together. The three-man delegation led by Jose Luis Robinson met with Cameroon’s Minister of Employment and Vocational Training, Zacharie Perevet, on October 30, 2015 in Yaounde to present findings of their two-week stay in Cameroon. 

In view of putting in place three pilot employment centres in councils with the partnership of Argentina, the experts from the country, after meeting with government and council officials in the Centre and Littoral Regions, suggested that Cameroon needs not to copy their example, but rather share them. The delegation while appreciating the evident signs of development with small businesses anounding and construction work on first-generation projects, stressed that government was supposed to put stress on promoting the art of personal contact and approach for meaningful job search.

They explained that decentralisation was challenging embracing it in its entirety was prerequisite for offering more jobs. The experts are in the next two years expected to come up with a manual that will promote employment in Cameroon. Minister Zacharie Perevet signed an agreement with the delegation from Argentina, allowing them to produce employment handbooks for Cameroon.

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Ngwa Bertrand

13.Nov.2015

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The Federal Republic of Germany has in the past 50 years supported the government of Cameroon through some of its priority areas that hinge on decentralisation, forest biodiversity, governance and maternal mortality. The areas of cooperation have since then witnessed progress urging government negotiations in 2013 to offer more support, in rural development. Opening a two-day Germano-Cameroon inter-government meeting in Yaoundé on November 11, 2015, experts were ready to chart the way forward for sustainable rural development.

The German delegation leader to the forum, Prof Dr. Christophe Kohlmeyer said; “In rural development you can do everything but we want to do the most important things with the biggest impact in order to help this country to become a middle income economy.” In the company of the German Ambassador to Cameroon, Holger Mahnicke, Prof Dr. Christophe Kohlmeyer restated that Cameroon ambition is to be self sufficient in food supply in the Central African sub-region. Offering jobs to rural youths as ways of keeping them out of harmful activities was also of concern.

The Minister Delegate to the Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, Yaouba Abdoulaye, said the necessity to allot substantial financial resources to earmarked sectors was prerequisite to developing the rural sector as promised. He insisted on the need for both partners to remain hardnosed in the identification of projects with respect to sectoral programmes of the concerned ministries. He however noted with dismay, the hitches to the smooth implementation of the over 98.5 million Euros (about FCFA 646 billion) 2014-2016 three-area development programme. He outlined procedural complexities, delays in the issuance of non-objection certificates and the inefficiency of some experts on the part of its development partners. 

The meeting was basically to plan and programme 2017-2019 triennal development projects binding both countries. Notwithstanding, the German delegation pledged sustainable support in all areas of economic development. They stressed that they were ready to maintain Cameroon’s green sector. “It is not only a bilateral venture which we are working for but a global task that we are working together,” said Prof Dr. Christophe Kohlmeyer. He noted Cameroon’s rich natural resources in the Congo Basin were huge and needed to be preserved.

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Ngwa Bertrand

12.Nov.2015

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In order to reduce the number of young people leaving university and other tertiary institutions in the country every year without jobs, President Paul Biya on February 10, 2011, ordered a special recruitment of 25,000 youths into the Civil Service. According to Angouin Ange Michel, the Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reforms, the operation went on well and was concluded in 2013 with the publication of further lists to replace those who were selected, but failed to turn up.

Except for 419 workers whose salaries have been suspended for various reasons such as abandoning work or succeeding in other recruitment tests, the whole exercise was a huge success. In all, 25,074 youths were recruited into the Public Service and the committee that was set up by the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Philemon Yang, to oversee the exercise, has since been dissolved – having concluded its work.

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Ngwa Bertrand

10.Nov.2015

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According to Forbes Africa, the richest man in francophone sub-Saharan Africa is the Cameroonian Baba Ahmadou Danpullo whose fortune has been valued at 547 billion FCFA. Riches he obtained from his multiple investments in real-estate, telecom and agro-industry.

Truly, it is common knowledge that the former truck driver now billionaire detains 30% of Nexttel’s (third mobile operator in the country) shares. However, Danpullo, who according to his close acquaintances holds more assets in Nigeria than Cameroon, is popular in his country for his massive Ndamwara tea plantations in the North-Western region, from where tea is exported by Ndamware Tea Estates.  

Additionally, its ranch in Ndamwara counts thousands of cattle heads from which, the biggest specimen was exposed at the Ebolowa agro-pastoral Comice. The animal amazed Cameroon’s head of State Paul Biya. Asides all these achievements, Cameroon’s richest man, asides agro-industry and telecom has numerous real-estate assets in Nigeria, France, Switzerland and South Africa including two malls in Cape Town and the Johannesbourg’s Marbre towers, 32 floors and 152 m tall, third tallest in Nelson Mandela’s nation.

In 2009, Baba Ahmadou Danpullo donating 100 million FCFA to the ruling party, the CPDM, jumped into the communication sector with the DBS (Danpullo Broadcasting System) TV channel. He is also a minority shareholder in state-owned companies such as Sodecoton, Airports of Cameroon (ADC) and took over the tea industry from Cameroon Tea Estates (CTE), privatizing it.

Multiple sources declare that he was backing the Philippian firm ICTSI to acquire the container terminal of Kribi’s deep water port which was finally awarded to a French-China consortium led by the Bolloré group. The same sources revealed that, Ndamwara’s discrete billionaire who does not have a very good reputation in regards to his employees’ labor rights, aimed at the time to grab the 20% which were to go to Cameroonian nationals for this contract as set by the government.

Source:Business In Cameroon

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Ngwa Bertrand

09.Nov.2015

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The United States cannot pay off huge national debts of $65 trillion, unless it stops its endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, says an American economist. Paul Sheldon Foote made the comments on Sunday when asked about comments by Dave Walker, former comptroller general, who said the US national debt is [over] three times as much the oft-cited figure of $18 trillion. “If you end up adding to that $18.5 trillion the unfunded civilian and military pensions and retiree healthcare, the additional underfunding for Social Security, the additional underfunding for Medicare, various commitments and contingencies that the federal government has, the real number is about $65 trillion rather than $18 trillion,” Walker had said.

Foote noted that “the reasons are very simple, if you keep the interest rate very low and have investment opportunities low and that the stock market has been flat that means that the pension funds are not going to be the 79 percent growth rate that had been put into their models and so there will not be enough money to pay people’s pensions.” “Both the corporate and government pensions in this country for the large part are far underfunded, social security we have known for a long time is not adequate and will not be without major changes,” he noted. “That’s true that the deep hole we have for ourselves is much worse than politicians want to talk about, so they keep kicking the can down the road, hoping that somehow it will go away, but it cannot go away without economic growth and that cannot happen until we stop the endless wars and stop the endless programs for we promise people something for nothing,” he concluded.

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Ngwa Bertrand

08.Nov.2015

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The Minister of finance, Alamine Mey has said, ``in an effort to raise funds for the 2016 State budget during a turbulent international economic climate and at a time when the country is engaged in a war against Boko Haram, the government has decided to intensify revenue collection throughout the country``. He made the revelations October 29 in Yaounde during the council of ministers meeting.

Internet providers, mobile telephone companies and domestic gas producers will pay extra taxes to the state in 2016. The proposals on the minister’s table seeking approval from parliament during the December session, highlights that Cameroon’s budget- 4249.8 billion francs up from 3746.6 billion will be realized through the expansion of the state tax base which is the only solution to meet up the state collective resources.

Minister Alamine equally told other cabinet colleagues that specific taxes will be levied on distributors and industrial gas distributors such as Gaz du Cameroon, Liquid Air, Azote Gazeaux, Azote Liquide, Special Welding gas, Refrigerator gas, Oxygen Gaz, compressed Air etc. In one of these measures taken by the directorate of taxation department in the ministry of finance, the service head Mr. Modeste Fotoing announced that for the first 9 months of 2015, 1.300 billion francs was collected out of the 1.640 billion francs envisaged for the year under review.

According to the director General of Taxation in that Ministry, Modeste Fotoing, the success was due to the wide range of reforms carried out by his service such as, the innovation in the 2015 finance law, the cleaning up of the tax payers index, the putting in place of seven medium tax offices, the strengthening of the Directorate General Taxation capacity and the change in the procedure for tax payment nationwide. In the future Mr. Modeste noted, the taxation department in order to meet its objective will consolidate the reforms on the tax base by continuously cleaning tax payers’ index and reforms on Excise duties and also raise the installment on income tax amongst others.

However experts say the decision to impose taxes and reduce the amount paid during cash transactions by buyers will enable the government raise more revenue, curtail money laundry and currency manipulation. Cash payment if restricted will allow the state to control the money in circulation.

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Ngwa Bertrand

07.Nov.2015

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