“Ladies and gentlemen, dear collaborators;
The year 2020 that has just ended has been difficult not only for the entire Nation, but also for the National Statistical System. In addition to the insecurity in some localities in the Far North attributable to the terrorist sect Boko Haram and in the North-West and South-West regions, maintained by separatist terrorists, there are also security tensions on the borders with the CAR due to a socio-political crisis linked to the elections taking place in this neighbouring country. Faced with these crises, the Government, on the very high instructions of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and National Defense, is putting up fierce resistance and appropriate responses combining dialogue, openness and targeted strikes.
This context of insecurity has undermined a number of data collection activities in these parts of the country. These are mainly operations carried out from 2016 onwards, in particular the RGE2, the EC-ECAM4, FinScope, the PETS3, CAMPHIA and the EDSC5.
In addition to these security constraints, the COVID-19 pandemic has been reported in Cameroon since March 2020, and which has also had a negative impact on the activities carried out by the INS. These are mainly the study on cross-border trade for the improvement of national accounts. The RGE3, the EESI3 and the ECAM5 are nationwide operations that could also suffer from this insecurity and the pandemic crisis in their mapping and data collection phase on the ground, in case these constraints are not softened.”