(Business in Cameroon) - The annual meeting of the secretary general of the Commission bancaire de l’Afrique centrale (Cobac) and the West African Economic and Monetary Union WAEMU was held in Libreville.

During the meeting, the secretary general Halilou Yerima Boubakary informed that the supervisors’ board has been effective in monitoring the banking groups operating within the two regions. He also pointed out that there was still much to do as far as some groups’ monitoring and risk management is concerned. He further revealed that most of the time, those groups’ equity do not match their risk exposure.

He further informed that some of the banks have been showing signs of weakness because of the inadequacy between the equity and the sovereign risk, the rising volume of the outstanding receivables and the high level of operational risk. In March 2015, for instance, the outstanding receivables was CFA894 billion, 11.8% of the loans granted by the 52 banking institutions supervised by COBAC.

Boubakary then recommended the constant monitoring of the banking sectors in the member countries of COBAC and WAEMU, namely, their risk profile.

S.A