This increase is mainly due to budget support disbursed as part of the Economic and Financial Programme and regular issues of government securities.

According to the document entitled “2024 budget orientation debate” published by the Ministry of Finance, outstanding public sector debt is estimated at 12,122 billion CFA francs, or 41.1% of GDP. This represents an increase of 12.4% compared with the same period in 2022, when it stood at 10,618.8 billion CFA francs. This total is divided between external debt (7,996 billion) and domestic debt (3,017.7 billion). The increase in Cameroon’s public debt is mainly due to “budgetary support disbursed under the Economic and Financial Programme; regular issues of public securities, and numerous disbursements made on project loans; exchange rate variations with the strong appreciation of the dollar against the euro and, in turn, the FCFA recorded in 2022 (around CFAF 225 billion),” The offical data reads.

At the end of April 2023, outstanding external debt was estimated at CFAF 7,996 billion, or 28.8% of GDP, with a slight year-on-year increase of 1.7%. In detail, this outstanding debt is made up of : 47.5% (FCFA 3,800.4 billion) of multilateral debt, which is borrowing from multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank; 40.2% (CFAF 3,215 billion) of bilateral debt -borrowing taken out by one State from another State-; and 12.2% (CFAF 981 billion) of commercial debt -agreement or set of financing agreements, in the form of credits and/or loans, granted by financial institutions (creditor) to a commercial body (debtor).

Cameroon’s largest multilateral lenders include the World Bank , with a total of FCFA 1,169.8 billion; the IMF ; the African Development Bank ; and the African Development Fund . Bilateral partners include China (2,078.6 billion), France , Germany , Belgium , .