Nine years after the start of tariff dismantling, the Economic Partnership Agreement between Cameroon and the European Union continues to raise questions: 95.7 billion CFA francs in lost revenue on the customs side, while the benefits struggle to spread to local SMEs.

Faced with this situation, Jean Tchoffo, the Secretary General of the Ministry of the Economy (MINEPAT), said that “the EPA Committee should already consider the lack of attractiveness of the Agreement for other Central African countries”. Evoking in the wake of “the non-implementation of the development component of the Agreement, which is supposed to compensate for the negative effects of tariff dismantling

The evaluation of the implementation of EPAs in Cameroon reveals “a very unequal impact of the agreement depending on the size of the companies”. These declarations are based on data from Cameroon Customs. Which indicate that “80% of the 14,580 import operations carried out in 2024 [under the EPAs] were carried out by large companies. At the same time, SMEs have only captured 20% of it between them (18% for medium-sized ones, 2% for small ones), accentuating the structural imbalances in the local productive fabric

For the European Union, the EPA nevertheless shows tangible results. “There are concrete advances in terms of trade flows, but also in terms of impact on the attractiveness of Cameroon for European investors. This is a very good signal”, said Miranda Gonzales, Head of the ACP Unit at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Trade. In concrete terms, this agreement has allowed: a 33% increase in exports from Cameroon to the EU, the creation of jobs, exemptions from duties of nearly 250 billion francs granted to Cameroonian companies since the entry into force of the agreement