(Business in Cameroon) - The State of Cameroon, through its public administration services, must settle an invoice of Fcfa 38 billion, representing the unpaid water bills to be remitted to Cameroon Water Utilities Corporation (Camwater), the public company in charge of the infrastructure and Camerounaise Des Eaux (CDE), private company responsible for water distribution. This information was revealed on 31 March in Yaoundé, during a meeting chaired by the Minister of the sector, Basile Atangana Kouna.

“We have presented this important backlog of unpaid bills to the authorities. Instructions were given from very high in the hierarchy to gradually settle this debt. Aside from these instructions from a very high level, we also have the initiative taken by the Minister of Finance, for the acquisition of Camwater’s account receivable by one or several local financial institutions”, declared Alphonse Roger Ondoa Akoa, Managing Director of Camwater.

Mr Ondoa Akoa remained vague about the period during which the State accumulated unpaid invoices of FCfa 38 billion. “I talked about the reform of the sector, so it dates back to a while ago”, he simply said. But we know that the Cameroonian government started this reform in the sector back in 2008. So approximately nine years ago.

The Minister of Water and Energy however reassured by stating that: “several actions are still taken first at the government’s level, particularly to settle the State’s debt, by clearing the outstanding balance on the State-Camwater-CDE debt agreements, paying the investment subsidy allocated to Camwater, and catching up with payments for the public administrations’ water consumption”.

Sylvain Andzongo