This is one of the resolutions of the Cabinet meeting chaired on April 30, 2020 by the Prime Minister of Cameroon in Yaoundé.
On April 30, 2020, Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute chaired a Cabinet meeting in the auditorium of his service in Yaoundé. All the Ministers of state, Ministers and Deputy Ministers answered the call. Among the discussion topics was the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cameroon.
“At the end of the debate… the Prime Minister asked the Minister in charge of the Mining Industry and Technological Development to submit to him a matrix of actions for the development of the pharmaceutical industry in Cameroon, accompanied by a execution schedule and potential sources of funding.”
This decision of the Head of Government came after the debate between Ministers, but also, after the presentation by the Minister of Industries, Mines and Technological Development. A little earlier, the Minister had taken stock of the pharmaceutical industry in Cameroon and presented the constraints to its expansion.
According to him, “the pharmaceutical industry is still in its infancy … National production of essential drugs covers less than 5% of domestic demand, estimated in monetary value at 200 billion FCFA on average annually, in a sector almost dominated by imports.” The most significant constraints noted by the Industries Minister in this sector are: “the high costs of production factors, the massive and fraudulent imports of drugs, the insufficiency of materials and equipment, as well as the difficulties of access to the necessary financing, to the development of a real local pharmaceutical industry.”
