Cameroonian public debt exposed to foreign exchange risk

According to the Autonomous Amortisation Fund (CAA), the organisation in charge of managing the Cameroonian public indebtedness, 51% of the public debt of Cameroon is denominated in Euros, the only currency giving the Franc Cfa a pegged exchange rate.

The remaining 49.1% of the Cameroonian debt is thus susceptible of moving higher or lower, depending on the fluctuation of the currency in which the debt is denominated.

This exposure to foreign exchange risk, the statistics of CAA inform, concern a global sum estimated at approximately FCfa 1,708 billion, denominated mainly in US dollar (37.5% of the debt), the American currency; in Yuan (7.7%), the Chinese currency; and in Japanese Yen (3.2%).

As a reminder, CAA estimates at FCfa 4,502 billion the public debt of Cameroon as at end March 2016, which represents 26.8% of the GDP of the country. These statistics are however out of synch with the ones published in April by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who assessed the net global debt of Cameroon at FCfa 5,722 billion.

Quick calculation, there is a differential of over FCfa 1,200 between the figures of the Bretton Woods institution and those published by the Cameroonian government through the CAA.

BRM