#COVID19: Cameroon’s Economic Growth Can Take-Off With Early Acquisition Of Vaccine – AfDB
Cameroon's economic recession occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic can positively reverse if the country acquires vaccines in earnest, the African Development Bank said.
Cameroon was hit by a -2.4 per cent economic recession rate in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdown, but the country could record economic growth soon, a new report by the African Development Bank (AfDB) said.
According to the report, the growth could reach 3.5 per cent in 2021 and up to 4 per cent in 2022, which would be more than the predictions for the Central African Economic and Monetary Commission (CEMAC) countries that put projections at 3 per cent.
In the African Development Bank report on economic perspectives for Africa in 2021, this positive economic perspective can only be achieved through “the availability of a vaccine at the beginning of 2021 and the progressive extinction of the COVID-19 pandemic from the second semester of 2021.”
But the report, on a more somber note, reveals that “even if the pandemic is attenuated by June 2021, it would be difficult for the country to take off economically if the security crises in the country continue to aggravate at the country’s borders notably in the East with the Central African Republic and in the two Anglophone regions.”
Political and economic observers in the country believe that the possibilities of an aggravation of the security situation are very real and that the negative evolution of the COVID-19 situation is of grave concern to the authorities of the country.
The second wave of the pandemic is already ravaging the country. Cameroon in the first place wanted to acquire the Astrazeneca vaccine for its population but has decided to hold on following the polemic surrounding the immunity capacities and the secondary effects of the vaccine.
“Also, by the principle of precaution and prudence, the Cameroon scientific council has just advised the health authorities to suspend the project of the administration of the Astrazeneca vaccine in the country,” a source in the Ministry of Public Health told HumAngle on Sunday.
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