Board members of NSC examined the project in its extraordinary session last Thursday.

Cameroon will soon have regulatory texts to guide the production of statistics by physical and moral persons for better decision-making for the socio-economic development of the country. Board members of the National Statistical Council (NSC) met in Yaounde Thursday September 6 under the auspices of its Board Chairman, Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, also Minister of the Economy, Planning and Regional Development, to examine the legislative documents and their texts of application for onward transmission to the Prime Minister, Head of Government.

This was in its first extraordinary session for the year. It came on the heels of the 10th ordinary session of the council of November 17, 2011 which authorised the drafting of the texts.

According to the explanatory note, various institutional audit reports of the National Statistics System in the country show that the collection of national statistics in the country is not well coordinated and is almost a forgone activity in most government ministries and structures, their importance for decision-making notwithstanding. Statistics are very rare to come by in the country and even in exceptional institutions and moments where they are available, their viability is usually questionable.

Speaking during the board meeting, Mr Nganou Djoumessi said the December 6, 1991 law guiding the statistical surveys in Cameroon and the May 9, 1993 Prime Ministerial Decree fixing the application conditions of the law are already wanting vis-à-vis the country's growth vision contained in the Head of State's "Greater Accomplishment Programm.". Thus, the need to reform the texts to enable them meet the challenges of the time.