Cameroon Faces Mounting Treasury Arrears and Rising Public Debt

According to the recent public debt outlook report published by the Autonomous Sinking Fund (CAA), as of September 30th, 2025, the Cameroonian Treasury has accumulated outstanding payments estimated at 171.3 billion FCFA (302 million USD). The public debt manager notes in its report that “these invoices, pending payment to the Treasury for approximately three months, relate to the supply of goods and services, counterpart funds, state personnel expenses, subsidies, other transfers, domestic debt within the budgetary network, etc.”

Furthermore, the CAA indicates that 99 billion FCFA (174.5 million USD), or nearly 57%, of this total outstanding amount represents outstanding receivables over three months old. Meanwhile, invoices less than three months old are estimated at 72.3 billion FCFA (127.5 million USD), or 41.5% of the total amount.

Cameroon’s Treasury Struggles with Cash Shortages as Public Debt Nears 14,600 Billion FCFA

The volume of invoices for goods and services pending payment to the Public Treasury in Cameroon rivals that of ” other transfers “, which amounted to 176.7 billion FCFA over the same period, including more than 132 billion FCFA of RAPs of more than three months.

As a reminder, the total amount of outstanding invoices for the past three months at the Cameroonian Public Treasury as of the end of September 2025 is estimated at 485.4 billion FCFA (856.5 million USD). The CAA indicates that “this data is still to be finalized by the Public Treasury as part of the end-of-period reporting process at the end of September 2025.”

According to the analysis, the Cameroonian public debt manager points out that “this accumulation of public debt reflects the country’s cash flow problems.” Hence the regular recourse to issuing government securities on the sub-regional money market.

However, the CAA notes that, due to strong capital demand, these loans have become increasingly expensive. In addition to these bond issues, the country’s debt is trending upward due to the use of private placements on the international capital market, in a context where international financial institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) consider its risk of over-indebtedness to be very high. Indeed, the CAA recalls in its monthly economic outlook, Cameroon’s public debt was estimated at 14,591 billion FCFA (US$27.75 billion) as of September 30, 2025.

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(Featured image by Ariel Nathan ADA MBITA via  Unsplash)

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First published in Financial Afrik. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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