The Cameroonian government, Central African States Bank (BEAC in French) and the International Financial Corporation (IFC) are currently in talks to create a credit bureau to facilitate local SMEs access to bank financing.

This was revealed by the IFC resident representative, Henri Rabarijohn, as he approaches the end of his stay.

With a system of information sharing of companies’ financial obligations and history among loan establishments, the credit bureau will enable the creation of a kind of individual rating system for companies depending on their solvability and credit.

According to the IFC, the availability of this information is not only likely to reduce interest rates for companies, particularly SMEs which are generally hardly structured, but will also considerably increase the total amount loaned by banks to finance the economy.