Why change the base year of the national accounts?
The national accounts are compiled from a reference year, known as the base year, which represents the reference year of macroeconomic structures and aggregates. However, as we move away from the base year, the structure of the economy changes and consequently the quality of the national accounts deteriorates.
The need to update the base year (rebasing) of Cameroon’s national accounts is mainly justified by structural changes in the economy, in particular changes in product prices, the appearance of new products or new activities, and the densification of certain branches of activity with the entry of new operators. These structural changes deserve to be integrated into the national accounts, on the one hand, for a better estimate of national wealth and, on the other hand, for better consideration in all macroeconomic and budgetary forecasting models, as well as in models for simulating the impact of economic policies.
In addition, the rebasing aims to continue and deepen the implementation of the recommendations of the last System of National Accounts adopted by the United Nations in 2008 (2008 SNA) started in the old 2005 database.
