The new form of the National Investment Company (SNI) is subject to the signing, on July 10, 2024, of a presidential decree transforming the public entity into a publicly-owned company with the State as the sole shareholder.
Led for over 21 years by Yaou Aïssatou, the SNI will be subject to a new restructuring, 33 years after the operation was enacted in November 1991. In the details of the recent decree, the SNI is now endowed, among other things, with its own legal personality, financial and management autonomy, in accordance with the provisions of laws n° 2017/010 and n° 2017/011 of July 12, 2017 on the general status of public establishments and public enterprises, to the regulations of the Ohada uniform act, in particular on the implementation of the Industrialization Master Plan (PDI) updated by the government in 2020.
In the same vein, the decree activates levers authorizing the SNI to create branches. “… It is notably responsible, through its subsidiaries: for financing investments; venture capital and development capital operations; carrying out stock market intermediation and asset management activities; carrying out studies and providing advisory support; monitoring public companies” specifies the text. A shield raised that should allow the SNI, via its subsidiaries, to proceed with the mobilization and orientation of financing. The intended purpose is to promote productive investment, particularly in the industrial, agricultural, mining, financial, commercial and service sectors.
Despite a negative net profitability rate from the companies in its portfolio, the text signed by Paul Biya, the Cameroonian Head of State, devotes a new financial envelope to the public entity. Indeed, to meet its new missions, the text of July 10 also announces a financial restructuring worth 200 billion CFA francs. According to the presidential decree, the funds to be injected will be drawn from the 2024 budget and will then be paid in four successive annual tranches of 50 billion CFA francs starting from the current year.
As a reminder, the top management of the SNI failed to capitalize on the achievements of the first reform carried out in November 1991. An operation by which the Cameroonian State had proceeded to eliminate balance sheet losses by means of the recovery by the Public Treasury of equipment bond debts amounting to 84 billion CFA francs. Moreover, in a report on companies published in 2022 by the Technical Commission for the Rehabilitation of Public and Parapublic Sector Enterprises (CTR),
it is observed on the basis of the figures communicated by the Commission that the fixed assets of the SNI fell from 62.2 to 51.2 billion CFA francs, just as the net result fell from a surplus of nearly one billion to a deficit of nearly 5 billion CFA francs. In addition, at the level of the company portfolio, out of 32 entities, the SNI only has 24 subsidiaries still in operation. According to the Technical Commission for the Rehabilitation of Public and Parapublic Sector Companies (CTR), we are witnessing “an overall deterioration in the performance of the SNI portfolio, whose net profitability rate of companies stood at -51.05% in 2019 compared to -37.56% in 2018”.
