Les contraintes de la privatisation des entreprises publiques et parapubliques au Cameroun
Pascal Nguihé Kanté
This paper on “Privatisation of public and quasi-public enterprises in Cameroon
and its constraints” seeks to illustrate the problems and difficulties of privatisation
efforts in developing African countries by giving an overview of advances and
drawbacks of the privatisation movement in Cameroon.
Since the launching of the Privatisation Programme in Cameroon in the early
nineties, results largely failed to meet expectations. As of yet, out of some twenty
enterprises listed for privatisation only about ten have actually been transferred to
the private sector. The reasons for this staggering progress are of legal, but also and
primarily of strategic, social and economic nature.
In fact, the legal process of privatisation and its institutional setting as provided for
by the Government of Cameroon are rather complex and cumbersome and, therefore,
unsuited for making privatisation a success. What is worse, the economic situation
of the enterprises bound for privatisation hardly was attractive enough for potential
third party acquisitions.
In order to overcome these difficulties, the Government of Cameroon should not only
have provided for a less complicated and more transparent procedure, but also and
primarily it should have restructured these enterprises before offering them on the
market. It is only this way that more potentially interested national or foreign capital
owners could have been attracted. In fact, the failure of the privatisation process
seems to be directly linked to the weak financial and economic situation of developing
countries, to the deficits of their institutional structure, and to the problems of sound
governance from which they suffer. It is the aim of the paper to show, to which extent,
beyond legal requirements, the context of privatisation determines the conditions of
its success.
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Un processus complexe
— 2.1 Un cadre juridique mal conçu
— 2.2 Une absence de consensus sociopolitique
• 3 Des entreprises non attractives
— 3.1 La rentabilité incertaine des entreprises à privatiser
— 3.2 Les incertitudes de l’environnement macroéconomique
• 4 Conclusion