(Business in Cameroon) - The Cameroonian government has just awarded to a consortium gathering Afriland First Bank, Société Générale Cameroun and EDC Investment Corporation, the investment branch of the Pan African group Ecobank; a contract to arrange a bon of FCfa 150 billion.

The two parties discretely signed the related documents a few days ago in Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital. For the moment, the details of this new bond from the Cameroonian State, the 4^th of its type since 2010, have not been revealed.  

We can however note that to increase the likelihood of a successful fundraising operation on the Douala Stock Exchange (DSX), the Cameroonian government preferred to retain the services of three financial institutions as arrangers, and not a sole company as was the case for the three previous operations.

This option is even more understandable as the public savings fund collection the State of Cameroon is getting ready to launch will take place in a context of “contraction of banking liquidity observed since the first half of 2015”, as noted by the Monitoring Council of the settlement and security custody unit (CRCT) of the Central Bank of the CEMAC states.

A situation that the Central Bank attributes to the “sharp increase in the States resorting to the public securities market” (funds raised doubled in 2015 to FCfa 635.8 billion); a market on which more than half of the funds raised by the CEMAC States generally come from Cameroon, according to an estimate from the Treasury of the Ministry of Finance.  

As a reminder, in June, the National Refinery Company (Sonara) tried to sell 69,212 shares on the over-the-counter market of the Douala Stock Exchange, to raise FCfa 69 billion. But at the end of the operation, only 50% of the shares on offer were actually sold.

Brice R. Mbodiam