Integrating the three Sustainability dimensions: A Social Accounting Matrix approach for Cameroon

A Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is a comprehensive and economy-wide database that records data on all transactions taking place in an economy over a specific period, typically one year. The SAM serves two primary objectives. Firstly, it presents the economic structure and interrelationships among economic agents in the region under analysis. Secondly, it provides a database for analysing the economy’s performance and simulating the effects of policy interventions through multisectoral linear models and computable general equilibrium (CGE) models. This paper presents the 2016 SAM for Cameroon, offering a suitable database for implementing and evaluating the country's developmental, social, economic and environmental policies. The paper outlines how to pass from a standard structure of the SAM to a detailed scheme by explaining all the accounts included, and covering key aspects of its construction and estimation. This SAM presents a high level of disaggregation by encompassing labour and household characteristics, along with satellite accounts for employment and emissions. The SAM is used as a database to perform a descriptive analysis of the Cameroonian economy and to obtain results that focus on the three sustainability dimensions: social, economic and environmental.