It is a distress call that Yvon Sana Bangui, the governor of Beac, launched on June 24, 2024, reminding the Cameroonian authorities of the need for rapid rehabilitation of Sonara in order to reduce the negative impacts suffered by the sub-region since the fire of May 2019.
“Today, all the countries in the sub-region import finished petroleum products. This weakens our external position. “In Cameroon, I plead for Sonara to be restored very quickly,” declared Yvon Sana Bangui during the press conference relating to the 2nd ordinary session of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of Central African States ( BEAC) for the financial year 2024. From the confidences of the Governor of Beac, we can see that Cameroon continues to play a very important role in the CEMAC sub-region.
Moreover, the latter admits the fact that Cameroon imports all finished petroleum products (super, diesel, kerosene and part of the volumes of domestic gas) consumed on its territory, since the fire which ravaged the the country’s only oil refinery in May 2019, greatly weakens the foreign exchange reserves of the Cemac zone, hence the urgency of restoring the refinery as quickly as possible.
With a volume of reserves projected at 7,285 billion FCFA at the end of 2024, or approximately 4.79 months of imports; the Governor is banking heavily on Cameroon, which for several years now has been the supplier of between 70 and 80% of foreign currency assets in the Cemac zone. However, if the country of Paul Biya maintains its imports of finished petroleum products in the long term, the foreign exchange reserves exploited by the CEMAC countries will considerably deteriorate. Hence the Beac governor’s plea for a rapid rehabilitation of Sonara. Indeed, by relaunching crude oil refining activities; Sonara will gradually reduce imports of finished petroleum products, and contribute to the preservation of the country’s foreign exchange reserves, the volume of which helps many CEMAC states to carry out their own imports.
Announced since 2022 for an estimated cost of 250 billion CFA francs, the Sonara rehabilitation work is stalling although Prime Minister Dion Ngute announced on November 30, 2023, the completion of engineering studies extended to architectural aspects during of the year 2024. In this regard, Gaston Eloundou Essomba, Minister of Water and Energy, confided to parliamentarians in November that the American group Chemex Global LLC and the French Performance Plus Innovation have already won the contracts to carry out the studies and assistance to project management.
In addition to this aspect, the same minister assured that under the new instructions of the President of the Republic. Responsibility for leading the Sonara rehabilitation-restructuring project was entrusted to the general director of Sonara, Harouna Bako in his capacity as project owner.
If subsequently, an action plan to lead to the resumption of production at the refinery was adopted and transmitted to the International Monetary Fund; on the side of the BEAC the wait is starting to be long for this sub-regional banking institution which absolutely wants foreign exchange reserves to be stable and for Cameroon to continue to play its providential role as the largest provider.
