(Business in Cameroon) - The National Statistics Institute (INS) has just published the results of its fourth Cameroon Household Survey (ECAM 4), conducted in 2014. Results showed that out of an estimated Cameroonian population of 21,657,488 in 2014, 37.5% are poor.

This means 8,088,876 people live below the poverty line, which is XAF339,715 per adult equivalent per year. Are included, people who are not able to spend XAF931 per day per adult equivalent to meet their basic needs (food and non-food needs).

As in 2007, poor people in Cameroon in 2014 were concentrated in rural areas, 90.4% of the total poor population. Regions with the majority of the poor are the Far North (35.8%), the North (20.1%) and the North West (13.2%). Most of them reside in households with more than 8 persons (48%) and in those with an out-of-school heads of family (46.9%). In addition, poor people come from households within which the heads are farmers, fishermen and herders or work in the informal agricultural sector.

Nearly eight out of ten poor heads of households (77.3%) considered themselves poor in 2014. The level of perception of poor households in relation to the scale of living standards improved between 2007 and 2014. Just over half of the representatives of poor households (51.0%) think they live like their neighbors. Almost one-third (33.0%) of poor households report living worse than their parents and about the same proportion (32.4%) report having the same standard of living as their parents.

According to the statement of the heads of poor households, their household's financial situation is precarious since slightly more than half believe that their household's financial situation allows them to achieve a fair balance (equality between expenditure and income) and almost all poor households believe they have an income that is either very unstable or almost stable. According to them, the three main causes of poverty are in decreasing order of importance: lack of employment, laziness and corruption or mismanagement.

In 2014, INS says, the amount to be disbursed to poor people to lift them out of poverty was estimated at XAF775.1 billion, 23.4% of the State budget in that year.

Sylvain Andzongo