Drop in world oil price:

Visiting IMF official says could seriously affect Cameroon’s economy

By Sylvanus Ezieh in Yaounde

An IMF official leading a strong-man delegation to Cameroon has predicted bad weather for the Cameroon’s economy owing to what he said is a drop in the price of oil in the world market. Mario Zamaroczy expressed the fear yesterday after a courtesy visit to the ministry of finance.

“...The price of oil in the world market has drastically dropped for the last three months which of course will have a significant repercussion on Cameroon and CEMAC in general. So that is the general context,” he stated.

As measure to mitigate the situation, Zamaroczy recommended a revision of revenue projection on a conservative basis. Hear him: “In view of the oil price drop, I will call on the revision of revenue projection on a conservative basis to be just on the safe side. And then on the expenditure side, we would like to see a full and transparent rendition of all the expenses regarding the budget. .. a transparent and realistic budget for 2015. We would also look at possible ways of financing the budget.”

Mario de Zamaroczy is at the head of an International Monetary Fund, IMF delegation in Cameroon to evaluate the execution of the 2014 state budget. The delegation of five began the evaluation sessions yesterday with officials of the ministry of finance. Yesterday’s assessment also took the IMF delegation members to the ministry of economy, planning and regional development for a similar working visit.

The evaluation meeting which finance officials prefer to call it a courtesy visit is one of the missions led by IMF every year for the evaluation of state budgets. Zamaroczy who named it “the spring meeting’ said it is the most important amongst the four annual meetings. The evaluation would be followed by a formal report.

The IMF officials shall during the one-week session examine what has happened so far in the execution of the 2014 budget including the revenue and expenditure. They would also guide Cameroonian officials on how to continue with the preparations of the 2015 budget.

“The specific context of this mission is to look at what happened in the general economic context of the country and the world at large, the execution of the 2014 budget and also have some preliminary exchanges on the 2015 budget,” Zamaroczy stated.

The IMF official disclosed regrettably that the world economic context has not improved since his last visit to Cameroon. Europe for example, he said was a sad case in the sphere of economic growth.

The weeklong evaluation meetings would also convey the IMF officials to the National Hydrocarbons Corporation, SNH and the Hydrocarbons Price Stabilization Fund, CSPH for similar discussions.