Public Finances Tested by Citizen Inclusion in Cameroon
The assessment drawn from the 2025 Open Budget Survey highlights a divergent trajectory between technical compliance with financial readability requirements and the effectiveness of citizen inclusion in Cameroon. While the country scores 58/100 on the transparency indicator, reflecting genuine efforts to make state accounting documents available, the public participation score has collapsed to 9/100, down from 20/100 two years earlier.
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This decline, which places the state apparatus below the global average set at 17/100, reveals the narrowness of institutional frameworks for direct interaction between the executive, the legislature, the Supreme Audit Institution, and civil society during the decisive phases of arbitration and audit of public expenditure.
This retreat in formal consultation opportunities contrasts with the provisions of the July 2018 Code of Transparency and Good Governance, whose Article 48 enshrines the right to information and the co-construction of budgetary choices. Although initiatives such as the dialogue forum with civil society organizations and the participatory drafting of the citizens' budget demonstrate a willingness to align with international standards, the Open Budget Initiative assessment underscores that these mechanisms remain too restrictive to ensure genuine representation of communities and local economic actors. The absence of systematic public hearings in Parliament during the examination of the finance law or the analysis of budget execution reports limits the scope of democratic oversight over the management of public funds.
To restore the credibility of budgetary processes and consolidate the fiscal contract between the state and taxpayers, financial authorities must move beyond the merely informative dimension to institutionalize inclusive participation at every stage of the budget chain. Broadening pre-budget consultations to the entire associative fabric, opening parliamentary debates to civil society contributions, and integrating citizens into the drafting of the Supreme Audit Institution's audit programs constitute essential levers. The modernization of public finance governance in Cameroon thus rests on its capacity to transform formal transparency into a genuine instrument of democratic accountability and answerability.
The Editorial Team
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