After a difficult 2020 financial year marked by the persistence of security crisis in the Far North, North-West and South-West Regions and the impact of the sanitary and economic crises triggered by the Coronavirus pandemic, here we are in the year 2021 with the same challenges though, but with new prospects.
Yes, 2021 is a year with considerable symbolic meaning. It fits in the continuity of the start of 2020, the second phase of the implementation of Vision 2035, operationalized by the 2020- 2030 National Development Strategy (NDS30).
This new reference framework of Government’s development actions for a ten (10) year period, is the outcome of a widespread consultation process with notably the involvement and contribution of various development stakeholders and grass-root populations.
This strategy aims at facilitating the structural transformation of the national economy and promoting more inclusive development. In particular, it intends to revamp the production, industrial and manufacturing sector by promoting domestic consumption and production in strategic fields.
NDS30 is therefore a reflection of the legitimate aspirations of a people determined to provide its input to our country’s emergence, in a spirit of social cohesion. It is increasingly the expression of a renewed call for mobilizing the sons and daughters of our country, within the country and the diaspora, to work positively in favour of the Irreversible drive towards Nation building, to which the President of the Republic, His Excellency Paul Biya, is invited all his compatriots. Emergence is a national cause.
The year 2021, whose growth projections stand at 3.3%, has revealed itself as a year during which the economic revival objectives are aligned to strong strategic options contained in the NDS30, such as structural transformation, human capital development, strengthening governance and decentralization, revisiting public policies and supporting production and processing daily consumer products.
Also, investment choices, guided by the current economic crisis, will lead us in priority towards the completion of the commissioning of major infrastructural projects, finalization of Government’s special projects and programmes (AFCON 2022, The Three-year Emergency Plan for Growth Acceleration), implementation of the reconstruction plans for the North-West, South- West and Far North Regions, carrying out pre- required conditions for setting up Universal Health Coverage and stepping up decentralization.
However, achieving the objectives assigned by the Head of State in this prevailing environment requires greater rigour in streamlining budgetary choices. To this effect, we should perform better with often limited resources.
We will therefore need to optimize and streamline our work in order to be efficient. In this perspective, Government intends to fully lean on private sector dynamism, civil society involvement, all development actors’ mobilization and economic and financial partners’ support, so that the fruits of growth should be beneficial to all Cameroonians as being the result of a collective effort, within a spirit of national solidarity.
To this end, each and every one of us must be all hands-on deck.
By Alamine Ousmane Mey, Minister of Economy, Planning and Regional Development
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