Il avait quoi avant? Before Biya, there was SONARA!.

During her visit to a road construction site in the Far North, one of the most underdeveloped Regions in the country, in response to complaints of bad roads, she asked: “What was there before?” She then went on to praise the ‘development efforts’ of President Paul Biya.

The evidently clumsy question triggered various reactions and interpretations; with many articulate critics enumerating the development infrastructure and institutions the CPDM regime inherited, including the National Oil Refining Company, SONARA. 

There is no gainsaying the fact that some of these institutions had, at the prodding of the Bretton Wood Institutions, been liquidated, privatised or are sinking in debts like the Cameroon Development Corporation, CDC.

So critical were the critiques, with some demanding that the minister should apologise. Her office had to issue a public statement explaining that: “A video clip relating to the mission she carried out on February 5, 2024, in Maroua, as part of the inspection of the execution of CD2 Urban projects, and which became viral in social networks, arouses interpretations and reactions out of context". 

The statement added that what Minister Ketcha Courtès meant was that "What was the condition of the roads before the project", which execution was limping.

But the question, even if out of context, however, remains valid in the current political atmosphere to ask what the Biya regime inherited and how it has ameliorated the conditions of such inheritance in his mission of "Major Achievements”, which he promised after taking office again in 2018.

In the president's words: "The time has therefore come to move on to 'Major Achievements' by creating a new dynamic for Cameroon".

President Biya outlined for his next seven years, which ends in October, a policy of openness, decentralisation, good governance and modernisation of the public service to make it more efficient, to consolidate the balance of public finances, accelerate growth, position the primary sector at the forefront of exports and increase solutions for youth employment.

The catalyst for those "achievements", which came on the heels of "Major Ambitions", would have been SONARA, but part of it got burnt in just less than a year after Biya took the sixth mandate of seven years. The fire disaster was thus a spanner in the works and a test of achievements.

SONARA was the major economic inheritance of the regime. Before the fire incident, it was the second most profitable company in the country. But today, it is the most indebted public enterprise to the point some observers refer to it as "a debt bomb".   

The country's flagship economic investment was ravaged by fire on May 31, 2019, less than a year after President Biya had announced his "Major Achievement" dynamics. 

For the past six years after that disastrous incident, the government has been making promises to refurbish it each year. All have ended up as a dead letter.

After the disaster, the Minister of Water and Energy, Gaston Eloundou Essomba, had said: “The first evaluation of the firms which were interested in this file put the cost of the rehabilitation at around 250 billion FCFA. Negotiations are already underway with technical and financial partners who have expressed interest in the rehabilitation of this refinery. However, the finalisation of these negotiations depends on the restructuring of SONARA's significant debt. The government is hard at work to complete this restructuring operation and allow a gradual amortisation of this debt to begin”.

On another occasion, the minister said an investment of 700 billion FCFA for the reconstruction of the plant and the continuation of work to extend and modernise the facilities will be required as years go by and inflation spikes in cost.

The Governor of the Bank of Central African States, BEAC, Yvon Sana Bangui, has also expressed concerns about government's promises to get the refinery fully operational, which have not been kept.

Speaking to reporters after the Second Ordinary Session of the Monetary Policy Committee, MPC, of BEAC, the Prime Minister, Head of Government, Chief Dr Dion Ngute, was quoted as promising that rehabilitation work was scheduled to start in 2022.

The BEAC boss then expressed dismay that the timeline has not been met. The PM was cited again making a similar promise to Parliamentarians during the November 2023 session.

PM Dion Ngute announced that Front End Engineering & Design, FEED studies would be conducted in 2024, to launch the rehabilitation project. This has again not seen the light of day. 

BEAC had at one time also mentioned Minister Eloundou Essomba as disclosing that two foreign companies, American Chemex Global LLC, and French Performance Plus Innovation, had been recruited to conduct studies and provide project management assistance. 

"Following new instructions from the President, the responsibility for overseeing SONARA’s rehabilitation has been assigned to the company’s General Manager. An action plan has been developed and submitted to the International Monetary Fund, IMF, and the engineering and project management firms have been selected," Minister Eloundou Essomba is quoted as having told Members of Parliament while he was defending the budget of his ministry for 2024.

As this daily reported yesterday, "the International Monetary Fund, IMF, is intensifying pressure on Yaounde to fast-track the rehabilitation of SONARA. The fresh pressure is the content of a report issued on January 30, 2025, by IMF Mission Chief to Cameroon, Cemile Sancak". 

The IMF went further to specifically urge “authorities to advance long-pending work on the SONARA restructuring plan...".

With all the vibes about "Major Ambitions" and "Major Achievements" by the Biya regime, it is just logical in an election year to rephrase Minister Célestine Ketcha Courtès and ask: What did the CPDM regime inherit and how has it ameliorated the performance with SONARA as a case study? The answer should explain the economic legacy of a regime of "Major Achievements".

This article was first published in The Guardian Post issue No:3360 of Wednesday February 5, 2025