Les contraintes de la privatisation des entreprises publiques et parapubliques au Cameroun

This paper on ?Privatisation of public and quasi-public enterprises in Cameroon and its constraints? seeks to illustrate the problems and difficulties of privatisation efforts in developing African countries by giving an overview of advances and drawbacks of the privatisation movement in Cameroon. Since the launching of the Privatisation Programme in Cameroon in the early nineties, results largely failed to meet expectations. As of yet, out of some twenty enterprises listed for privatisation only about ten have actually been transferred to the private sector. The reasons for this staggering progress are of legal, but also and primarily of strategic, social and economic nature. In fact, the legal process of privatisation and its institutional setting as provided for by the Government of Cameroon are rather complex and cumbersome and, therefore, unsuited for making privatisation a success. What is worse, the economic situation of the enterprises bound for privatisation hardly was attractive enough for potential third party acquisitions. In order to overcome these difficulties, the Government of Cameroon should not only have provided for a less complicated and more transparent procedure, but also and primarily it should have restructured these enterprises before offering them on the market. It is only this way that more potentially interested national or foreign capital owners could have been attracted. In fact, the failure of the privatisation process seems to be directly linked to the weak financial and economic situation of developing countries, to the deficits of their institutional structure, and to the problems of sound governance from which they suffer. It is the aim of the paper to show, to which extent, beyond legal requirements, the context of privatisation determines the conditions of its success.