(Business in Cameroon) - Recently in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, while reporting the state of its treasury, the CEMAC Commission (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea) revealed that as at May 31, 2020, only CFAF11 billion of Community Integration Tax (CIT) had been recovered. Compared with the volume of this tax recovered by the same period in 2019, this represents a 31% drop.
This situation undermines the functioning of the Commission, which depends on part of the CIT. As proof, the Commission indicates, it received only CFAF 5 billion out of the CFAF 29 billion expected during the period under review. For this reason, the Community institution is proposing three new ways to raise more resources.
"The first would be to create a tax (indirect or direct) on telecommunications. The second option would be to revise the regulation on CEMAC licences. The last alternative for financing would be the institution of a tax on the export of unprocessed raw materials," the Commission suggests.
Gabonese Daniel Ona Ondo (photo), chairman of the CEMAC Commission, encouraged his collaborators to fine-tune the feasibility studies so that he could present them to CEMAC decision-makers "when the time comes."
S.A.