‘Debat Patronal’ : Privatisation Comes Under Scrutiny

The second edition of the discussion forum organised by the Cameroon Employers’ Union (GICAM) christened ‘Debat Patronal’, took place on Thursday November 21, 2019, with special focus on privatisation and public-private partnership. The debate focused on evaluating the process so far and exploring opportunities for local companies to benefit from business ventures offered by the initiatives. The debate took place on the theme: “Privatisation, public-private partnership, what opportunities for Cameroonian enterprises?” 
In a keynote address, Ongolo Zogo, an economist at the University of Yaounde II traced the origin and evolution of the concept of privatisation before drawing a balance sheet of the process in Cameroon saying privatisation is successful with the financial or banking sector but negative when it comes to infrastructure – the reason for this negative balance sheet being that local companies lack the technical competences in certain fields such as maintenance of petroleum platforms, railway line extension, dam construction as well as in the domain of services.
Dwelling on the innovative forms of relations between the public and private sectors, the President of the Council for Support to Partnerships, Dieudonne Bondoma said the government has been making efforts to award more contracts to Cameroonian companies and announced that th...