Unlocking Growth in Cameroon: Easing Financial Sector Constraints and Closing Infrastructure Gaps

Cameroon’s growth has been consistently below expectations and reflects structural constraints that limit private-sector development, including a shallow financial system, sizeable infrastructure gaps, and weak public investment efficiency. Access to finance and underdeveloped infrastructure are increasingly binding obstacles, keeping firms small and productivity low. Using firm-level evidence, cross-country benchmarks, and a panel regression for 88 economies, this Selected Issues Paper (SIP) documents these constraints and finds that, conditional on the model and historical cross-country relationships, closing Cameroon’s gaps in financial development and infrastructure relative to the sample average is associated with substantially higher long-term income per capita—on the order of 28 percent. It also finds that even at current levels, improvements in efficiency could generate additional gains. The SIP outlines priority reforms to deepen financial intermediation, strengthen investment planning and execution, and accelerate infrastructure delivery to support Cameroon’s convergence toward peer economies under the National Development Strategy 2030.