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Cameroon

Updated: July 2026

Key Insights
The resources applied by the Cameroonian government to collect, compile, and publish national accounts data are inadequate to generate fully independent, high-frequency, and comprehensive macroeconomic statistics, though moderately stronger than many regional peers.

The national statistical body, the Institut National de la Statistique (INS), operates under notable structural, financial, and operational constraints:
  • Regional Conflict and Access Limitations: Ongoing security challenges-including the Anglophone crisis in the Northwest and Southwest regions and the Boko Haram insurgency in the Far North-restrict field data collection. Economic activity in these areas is frequently under-reported or estimated.
  • Large Informal and Agricultural Sectors: A substantial share of economic output stems from smallholder agriculture, livestock, and urban informal markets. Capturing these non-monetised and cash-based transactions requires regular, labour-intensive household and enterprise surveys that state budgets cannot reliably sustain.
  • Fiscal and Capacity Constraints: The INS faces recurrent budgetary limitations, affecting its ability to maintain up-to-date business registers, adopt modern digital collection tools, and retain specialised technical staff.
  • Heavy Reliance on External Partners: Major statistical operations-such as periodic GDP rebasings, national population censuses, and comprehensive living conditions surveys-depend heavily on financial and technical backing from international development partners, such as the World Bank and UN agencies.

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Data Quality Warning
Cameroon's data has been rated as poor and unreliable, it should not be used for serious decision-making. Show data anyway