Libom Li Likeng wants order in money transfer sector

The Minister of Post and Telecommunications has told clandestine operators that in no distant time reforms would be carried out in the sector whose potentials are enormous.

"Defaulters would face the law," she warned.

Minette Libom Li Likeng, the minister of Post and Telecommunications took a first step towards resolving the thorny issue of clandestine money-transfer operations in Cameroon by meeting with recalcitrant actors in the sector on Wednesday, 13 January 2016.

At the meeting that held within the premises of her ministry, it was revealed that a total of 226 structures are suspected of operating secretly at the level of the delivery of messages and money transfer.

The Median gathered that only 13 postal operators were said to have temporary authorizations while 101 have applied for such authorizations and are waiting.

In the meantime, 32 are awaited to pay the caution for the entry rights, the sites of 23 others have already been visited by officials of the ministry while 14 have simply backed out.

This newspaper further learned that nine are in litigation and deal exclusively in money transfer, six have incomplete files and four are still to be visited.

In addition, complaints were recorded – particularly those of microfinance institutions such as Express Union which is now doing postal money transfer as a banking activity.

To Libom Li Likeng, studies made show the sector as potentially rich in spite of the absence of an adequate judicial framework governing it. The minister said these studies also show some loopholes in the organization of the sector.

She promised that the postal sector would be structured in no distant future and warned that the state would not tolerate postal institutions that would not adhere to the measures taken.

The measures to be taken, she pointed out, would regularize the sector in such a way as to respond to the expectations of consumers of postal products and services.