(Business in Cameroon) - Between 2011 and the end of June 2020, the number of civil servants in Cameroon almost doubled, from 197,471 to 340,957, according to official documents. Over the 10 years, the country’s personnel expenses rose from XAF681.4 billion to over XAF1,000 billion.

Analyzing the expenses, the government explains that over the said period, the wage bill paid to civil servants using the state budget has grown by 5.6% on average annually despite efforts to consolidate the payroll.

 "The increase has already been pointed out in a study conducted, in 2018, on the sustainability of the wage bill. It was due to the rising number of civil servants recruited over the past ten years disproportionally to the number of servants that retired," it adds 

According to the government, the study also found out that in some productive sectors, the number of servants dropped significantly. Those sectors include agropastoral, mining, telecom, health as well as translation and interpretation.   

The exponential rise in the number of teachers

Most of the said recruitments were made in the secondary education sector, causing explosive growth in the wage bill in that sector. "From 30,640 to 83,308 between January 2010 and June 2020, the number of secondary school teachers has grown 2.7 folds. They now represent 34.4 percent of the public service workforce, up from 15.8 percent in early 2010. Similarly, their wage bill represents 32.3% compared to 21% in 2010," the government continues.

Due to these increases, Cameroon is unable, since 2011, to comply with the maximum wage bill sustainability ratio (wage bill as a percentage of GDP) of 35% set by CEMAC in its multilateral surveillance criteria. Between 2011 and 2018, that ratio has always averaged 40%. The highest (44.4%) was recorded in 2011. In 2019, the ratio dropped to 36.5%.  

This drop was certainly one of the first fallouts of the physical counting operation, COPPE, launched by the government to consolidate the payroll. Thanks to the operation, the government identified and removed fictitious servants from its payroll, saving an average of XAF30 billion of wage bills yearly.  

Brice R. Mbodiam