Cameroon’s Clandestine Budgets

As the Constitution mandates, the government of Cameroon presents its State budget proposals every year to the country in Parliament, which is required to scrutinise, amend and/or approve as well as authorise the President of the Republic to sign it into law. The budget numbers generally show anticipated revenues equalling expenditure and give the impression that all revenue and expenditure sources are or have been accounted for. But have/are they?

No! A close look at Cameroon budget numbers and existing regulations reveal many troubling discrepancies. On the revenue side, for example, proceeds from important income sources in the tax code are not at all accounted for in the State budget numbers the government presents to Parliament, every year. These include takings (billions of CFA francs) from sources earmarked, in the tax code, for key central government agencies such as the National Social Insurance Fund (CNPS) that handles pensions, Cameroon Radio and Television Corporation (CRTV) and the Local Government Funding Agency (FEICOM).

Similarly, State budget expenditure figures the government presents to Parliament do not include spending arrangements of the key central government agencies. Boards of the organisations are expected to decide and oversee their budgets. The Boards are scarcely known for meeting regularly, if they meet at all. So, the government agencies often run on the say-so of their managers, and the funds they use are hardly discussed or formally accounted for in public!

These clandestine budgets provide the government huge pots of put away money to allocate and spend as it sees fit. So much so, the government appears in no need to approach Parliament for supplementary budgets at any other time in the financial year, even as consultations between the government and Parliament look continuous. The government has a full-time minister in charge of relations with Parliament. But the substance of the consultations or lack thereof is not entirely public. Partisan political considerations play a big part in the consultations. Government supporters in Parliament rarely complain as much as opposition parliamentarians often do, about government budget consultations or lack thereof with them.

Nevertheless, Cameroon’s clandestine budgets are approved (tacitly at least) by Parliament, which endorses, with little or no scrutiny, the tax code and budget numbers the government presents in November, every year. The guarantee of individual rights and freedoms is so denied much needed transparency, responsiveness and accountability in Cameroon’s budget processes.

You can bring more attention to these problems and contribute to their resolution by raising and discussing them in public.