The diagnosis presents Cameroon’s baseline situation and highlights some major concerns regarding the implementation of trade facilitation measures.
The diagnosis presents Cameroon’s baseline situation and highlights some major concerns regarding the implementation of trade facilitation measures.
I- BASELINE SITUATION
The analysis of Cameroon’s baseline situation is based on international indices and national trade facilitation work.
1- Presentation of Cameroon’s ranking on international trade facilitation indices
Cameroon has embarked on a comprehensive trade facilitation reform programme by adopting several relevant measures at the legal, institutional and operational levels. However, international rankings and recent studies show that much remains to be done, especially in the area of cross-border trade, where delays and costs for imports and exports remain very high. To this end, Cameroon’s ranking in the various indices calls for a real review of the approaches used in trade facilitation.
The following developments analyse the current situation in order to describe a baseline for the future.
a- World Bank Doing Business Ranking (“Cross-Border Trade” Criterion)
– Content of the “Cross-border trade” Criterion of Doing Business:
Doing Business measures the time and costs associated with the logistics process of exporting and importing goods, including the time and costs (excluding customs duties and taxes) associated with meeting documentation requirements and complying with cross-border export and import trade procedures.
The case studies for imports take into account spare and containerised car parts (HS 8708), and for exports, the product for which the country has a comparative advantage (defined by the highest export value) to its natural partner, that is, the economy that is the largest buyer of the product. For Cameroon, the following are taken into account: cocoa-coffee destined for the Netherlands.
Cross-border trade data are collected through a questionnaire sent to local freight forwarders, customs agents and traders. Cameroon was ranked 186th out of 190 economies in the chapter on cross-border trade in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2018 report. .This ranking remained constant in 2019.
Figure 1: Comparison of Cameroon with some countries with similar economies
Source: Doing Business Report (World Bank) 2018
Cameroon’s ranking has not changed in the 2018 Doing Business ranking on the cross-border criterion where the country still ranks 186th. This indicates progress to be made – particularly in terms of accelerating reforms – to catch up with the regional average in sub-Saharan Africa and the performance of comparable developing countries.