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Update
-------------------------------------------------- Some Host Country State Budget Policy History
12 years ago, January 1998, the Legislative and Economic Advisory Service (LEAS) Programme of EITD Research published an assessment of Cameroon's structural adjustment efforts. The study looked at the government's ten year (1987/88 to 1997/98) budgetary policy history, together with the political and institutional processes involved in Cameroon budget-making, to explain why "government spending priorities are not tallying with its expressed intentions to tackle the major macroeconomic problems identified in its 1996/97 economic and financial report".
The government had identified the following key obstacles to restoring macroeconomic balances: 1) Low levels of savings and investments; 2) Poor education and health standards; 3) Deteriorating economic and social infrastructure; 4) The high costs of transportation; 5) The internal and external debt burden; and, 6) The financial system that does not meet development requirements.
The problems appear the same today! "It would be clear", the EITD Research study noted, "that structural adjustment is necessary. But, it is unlikely to work if those in power (the President, Parliament, the Courts and the Government) do not feel and are not made to feel obliged to serve the interest of the people, especially in the budget-making process".
Here is the full paper (in pdf) "STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT - How Cameroon is faring 10 years after".
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Cameroon's 2010 State Budget was approved by Parliament sitting in ordinary session November 2009, as required by law. Nevertheless, broad-based involvement or participation in the budget process remained limited. As in the past, the budget measures went through Parliament with scant public debate.
The budget passage in Parliament event attracted considerable media attention. But the media presentations were, again, far from focusing on the budget's substantive issues. The media interest in the state budget, as we noted in L & E Alert Vol. No. 3 of March 1998, "tends to be limited to the drama of comings and goings of government ministers as they take turns to defend their ministerial budgets. The actual words and arguments employed by ministers and parliamentarians in the budgetary debates are scarcely the subject of careful media analysis. This is due in part, to Parliament's very deplorable administrative habit of withholding some parliamentary proceedings from intense public scrutiny. It is also because several journalists and broadcasters appear to have a feeble grasp of Cameroon's major budget issues, and so fail to pursue them before, during and after sessions of Parliament. For example, interest groups who have their own budget proposals to present get little or no media attention without their being ready to make substantial financial outlays to journalists, broadcasters and media houses. This seems to be the unwritten principle in Cameroon's budget making process: budget decisions are for state officials and those with ransom money"!
The 2010 state budget and other finance law (lois des finances) documents are available at www.impots.cm.
-------------------------------------------------- Members of Parliament and the Draft Budget 2010 Legislators need as much help as possible, from other public policy stakeholders, you and us, to identify what works well or not in government and society, as they review and seek to improve draft state budgets and other existing or proposed legislation. Everyone is qualified to help bring to light truth, about what works well or not, where, how, why, etc., including suggestions of what could or should be done to bring about improvements as necessary. Your interests, as a public policy stakeholder, are not always (do not assume they are) identical to those of your representatives, or taken care of, in policy processes. Use your own experience (or lack of it) to introduce ideas and facts in policy processes, provide feedback on various policy impacts, and generate reforms. Hence the EITD Research LEAS Programme advisory letter of 01/11/09 to all public policy stakeholders regarding the government's draft 2010 budget required by law to be tabled in the November session of Parliament. The letter was dispatched with an attachment of the LEAS Programme advisory report, entitled "Awesome and Urgent State Budget Issues", to all Members of Parliament. The letter to all public policy stakeholders is available here (in pdf).
-------------------------------------------------- Giving Attention to Awesome and Urgent State Budget Issues
All parliamentarians sitting in the budget dominated November session of Parliament, and senior officials in the Secretariat of Parliament, received the 01/11/09 EITD Research LEAS Programme advisory report bringing attention to awesome and urgent state budget issues. "The whole country", the report addressed the budget session recipients, "and especially the vast majority of the population with poorly guaranteed rights and freedoms, is looking to see whether or how your involvement makes a difference in the life of individuals and the nation". The report and its nineteen (19) attachments presented specific examples of budgetary mishaps "that are sadly becoming too common, but often go undocumented systematically or followed up adequately, and grow our country's reputation for being corrupt, and failing as a state". It asked the representatives of the people to "act decisively, to put an end to the issues during this all important budget session of Parliament", by raising the issues, demanding and insisting on getting clear answers, and following them up with their own independent parliamentary investigations in depth, on the range of issues.
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The new dates for SBIC 2010 are November 2-4, 2010. Many thanks to all who have already sent in their participation application, abstracts and papers for SBIC 2010. We are still accepting participation applications, abstracts and papers.
We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause some public policy stakeholders, especially as this is the second postponement announcement.
Challenges of organisation notwithstanding, given the growing interest in SBIC, the new dates, November 2-4, 2010, will facilitate maximization of benefits of organisation for all participants.
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The EITD Research State Budget Issues Conference (SBIC) holding in Yaounde Cameroon, November 2-4, 2010, will bring over a thousand (1,000) delegates from many parts of Cameroon and the world together. It is a unique opportunity for all generations of public policy stakeholders to engage one another, investigate and follow-up compliance with legal guarantees of human rights and freedoms and their relations, or lack thereof, with annual finance laws or State Budgets. Much of the recurring crisis in society has to do with the ways in which public money is allocated and used or not, in accordance with law and, sometime, illegally.
Too often, when State Budget Issues of developing countries are discussed, services that tell the scale, pace and quality of human rights and freedoms guarantee, which government pays for or not, scarcely feature seriously. The assumption tends to be that the services so desired or programmed would become operational and deliver as expected if, and only if, money to settle their cost is found and made available, and preferably urgently. The thinking is costing many people in countries such as Cameroon dearly and denying the world much opportunity to further economic growth and prosperity.
Take judiciary services in Cameroon, for example, where recent simple enquiring and advisory letters (from the EITD Research Revival of Justice and Judiciary Reform [RJJR] Programme) to some key judiciary services officials, get responses that are mute or harassing, menacing, intimidating, wasting resources and jeopardising public trust in law. Why? What could any new or less money from government or state budgeting for the judiciary services do to deliver improvements, and how?
This predicament is not limited to judiciary services. Almost every public service in Cameroon is facing similar challenges. These include the serious problems in local and central government, water supply, electricity, housing, food, hygiene and sanitation, education, medical care, agriculture, climate change, etc. Cameroon is lagging on its promise to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). People in the country and around the world are hurting from the issues differently, and state budgeting solutions may not emerge for all if the concerns are not being articulated or understood well enough.
Everyone is qualified to help bring to light truth, about what or which service is working well or not, where, how, why, etc., including suggestions of what could or should be done to bring about improvements as necessary. Given the growing depletion of resources and urgent need to combat it, effective ways have to be continually found for government or state budgets to enable people to achieve more with available or less resources. In other words, people in countries such as Cameroon also have to be making or learning to make significant gains in productivity and competitiveness.
Hence the continuing EITD Research invitation to you and your organisation(s) to reflect on the issues and help meet the pressing needs by submitting your paper(s) for consideration in its forthcoming State Budget Issues Conference holding in Yaounde Cameroon, November 2-4, 2010.
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A big thank you to all who have already submitted abstracts or papers in response to the first call for papers. The deadline for submission of abstracts for the first call has passed, however, extensions have been agreed in line with requirements of the second call for papers. Submission deadlines are now as follows:
A list of abstracts and papers accepted so far for the Conference will soon be posted here, on this site.
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The United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) sent its e-Learning Course Calendar. The suite of government or state budget related online courses, registration procedures, fees, and other details can be viewed from their website at: http://www.unitar.org/pft/elearning.
-------------------------------------------------- Conference Languages and French Version
The Conference accepts presentations in English, French, Pidgin or any other Cameroon language. Every effort is being made to provide translations or interpretations where necessary.
We have also received some requests for a French version of the Conference website contents. We are working on it, and would welcome help to speed the work up. So if you can be of help, please get in touch. Email: info@eitdr.org or sbic@eitdr.org, or call us at (237) 7766-2395.
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