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Board members of Cameroon's lone airliner, Camair co are meeting in an extra ordinary board meeting in Yaounde today.

Though the agenda has not been disclosed, it's heavily alleged that the fate of the company's Managing Director hangs on a thread and it won't be a shocker if he is shown the door out of the sick facility.

Succeeding Nana Sandjo in August 2016, Ernest Dikoum just like the airliner has been on a turbulent flight. Close sources to the company say he has been in the bad books of his superiors for close to a year now.

It's alleged that amongst the malpractices are insorbodination and disrespect for constituted authority, mafia deals as well as the signing of certain decisions without consulting the board.

Observers claim these and other problems which he has been unable to solve might provide the leverage for him to be sacked.

The extra ordinary board meeting comes at a time when Camair co has been unable to stand on it's feet despite "reforms" engaged by the company to stay afloat.

The Boeing restructuring plan given a go ahead by the Head of state, Paul Biya is yet to be fully implemented.

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Rita Akana

24.Apr.2017

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The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the non-concessional arm of the World Bank group (WB) will release an amount of FCfa 113 billion in favour of the State of Cameroon, reveals a Presidential decree signed on 17 April 2017 by President Biya, text which authorises the Minister of Economy, Louis Paul Motazé, to contract this loan on behalf of the Cameroonian State. The said loan was approved by the Administrative Council of the WB on October 2016.

The funds that will thus be made available by the IBRD will be used to finance the transport sector, in which the government and its partners have been leading several projects since the year 2012. It will also be used for the rehabilitation as well as construction of national and transnational transportation routes, rehabilitation of the railways and upgrading equipment, or also improving the country's port infrastructure.

As a reminder, it was in October 2013, during the General Assembly meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington, that the Cameroonian State expressed its desire to be able to benefit from IBRD financing from then on. Following this request of the Cameroonian authorities, a World Bank mission led by Véronique Kessler, principal economist at the World Bank, made a visit to Cameroon in November 2013, in order to look at an eventual eligibility of the country to IBRD financing. Eligibility which occurred in the month of April 2014, and was announced by the Cameroonian government in an official communiqué.

The IBRD is the second window of financing of the World Bank group that has opened to the Cameroon State, after the window IDA (International Development Association). The only difference being that IDA loans are granted at concessional rates (generally lower than 1%) while IBRD loans are non concessional but are equally repayable in the long term (25 to 38 years with deferred payments of 5 to 10 years).

BIC

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Rita Akana

21.Apr.2017

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Based on the 2017 edition of the global tourism competitiveness index recently published by the World Economic Forum (WEF), Cameroon is among the 17 African tourist destinations with the most competitive prices. Cameroon indeed appears in the 15^th spot in Africa and is ranked 58^th at the global level.

At the CEMAC level, as is the case with several global rankings for some years now, Cameroon dubbed “Miniature Africa” due to the diversity of its tourism attractions, is once again outranked by Gabon, (who is also ahead of giants such as Morocco and South Africa), ranked 5^th most affordable African tourism destination in 2017, and 25^th at the global level.  

Egypt (2^nd worldwide), Algeria (4^th globally), Tunisia (9^th at the global level) and Botswana (13^th worldwide) dominate this ranking at the African level (refer to below ranking).

Price level is one of the 14 indicators used to generate the worldwide tourism competitiveness index, which also takes into account parameters such as security, health and hygiene, cultural openness, use and development of natural resources, the tourism marketing, roads and airports.

BRM

Ranking of African tourist destinations with the most competitive prices in Africa

1-Egypt (2^nd worldwide)

2-Algeria (4^th)

3-Tunisia (9^th)

4-Botswana (13^th)

5-Gabon (25^th)

6-Namibia (30^th)

7-Tanzania (34^th)

8-Gambia (36^th)

9-South Africa (43t)

10-Morocco (47^th)

11-Cape Verde (49^th)

12- Zimbabwe (53^rd)

13-Madagascar (55^th)

14-Lesotho (57^th)

15-Cameroon (58^th)

16-Mali (59^th)

17-Uganda (60^th)

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Rita Akana

19.Apr.2017

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Bonamoussadi a well-known quarter in the Douala 5 municipality seems to be witnessing a strange outbreak of refuse dumping on roads.

It appears the locality, which many see as an impressive neighbourhood, still habours primitive individuals.

 “This is completely unacceptable. Anyone caught doing this should be punished and even locked up because this is gross irresponsibility. This is blocking passage and causing much traffic during morning hours. This is primitive behaviour” declares an angry taxi driver  

A housewife thinks the problem stems from the fact that HYSACAM’s Dirt Bins are always overflowing with filth and are never emptied on time.

“HYSACAM trash cans are always full. People coming to throw dirt have no choice as they are blocked by dirt itself. They tend throw the dirt anywhere close to the cans. So I blame this situation on HYSACAM itself for not emptying their trash on time” says the housewife.

According to a HYSACAM worker, the company is doing all it can to add the number of trucks that work in the Bonamoussadi area to make sure that wastes are disposed on time.

Although most people applaud the work that HYSACAM is doing in the area, they still agree that much is still expected from the company as regards timeliness in carrying refuse off collection points.

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Ndi Derek Giyoh

17.Apr.2017

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26 dollars, being a little more than FCfa 16,000. It is the average price for the square metre of rent that an economic operator wishing to have an office in the city of Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, must pay. With this average price per square metre for office rent, Douala is the 13th most expensive African city. With an average rent per square metre of 22 dollars, around FCfa 13,500, Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital, is 15th in Africa, according to the survey “Africa Report 2017-Real Estate Markets in a continent of Growth and Opportunity” which has just been published by Knight Frank the British consulting firm specialised in real estate.

But, the survey reveals, in the two main cities of Cameroon, the average price per square metre for office rent is much cheaper than in Abidjan (32 dollars), and represents almost half of that charged in Ndjamena (55 dollars), Chad, and one third of those charged in Lagos (67 dollars) and Luanda (80 dollars), cities located respectively in Nigeria and Angola.

BRM

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Rita Akana

13.Apr.2017

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As of July 2017, construction work on an ultra modern shopping mall in the neighbourhood of Ekoudou, located in the 2nd arrondissement of the city of Yaoundé, should commence. The job should be done by the first quarter of 2019, allowing brand Carrefour, market leader in retail distribution in France, to attain a foothold in Cameroon and in Central Africa.

This information has just been revealed during a signing ceremony for a long term lease contract on a site of  3.5 hectares, between the Cameroonian government and CFAO Retail, associate of brand Carrefour. Construction work costing FCfa 30 billion will be undertaken by the Société de Gestion Immobilière du Cameroun (Sogimcam).

In detail, we learned, the shopping mall that CFAO Retail and Carrefour are preparing to build in the Cameroonian capital will be made up of a hypermarket, shopping arcade, restaurant space with seating capacity of more than 400 places and a car park. This shopping mall will then be the biggest by far in Cameroon, country in which the couple CFAO Retail-Carrefour will find other French brands such as Casino, well established for decades, or also Super-U, which opened its first shopping mall in the Cameroonian economic capital in June 2015.

As a reminder, it was in the first quarter 2016 that the group CFAO announced investments totalling 500 million dollars (about FCfa 275 billion) to construct 20 shopping malls in Central and West Africa. The countries concerned by these investments are Cameroon, Gabon, DRC, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.

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Rita Akana

13.Apr.2017

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