The Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC) is made up of six States: Gabon, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Republic of the Congo and Equatorial Guinea. With a total population of about 37 million, it covers a total surface of around 3 million km2. Together with the larger Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the mainly inactive Economic Community of Great Lake Countries (CEPGL), CEMAC presents one of the Central African regional Communities established to promote cooperation and exchange among its members.
The primary mission of CEMAC is to promote harmonised development in its member states in the framework of a common market.
Its objectives is to:
- strengthen competitiveness of economic and financial activities by harmonising regulations that govern them;
- ensure the convergence toward sustainable economic and financial performance by coordinating economic policies and rendering national budgetary policies consistent with the common monetary policy;
- create a common market based on free mobility of persons, goods, capital and services;
- assure coordination of national sector policies in the following areas: agriculture, livestock, fishing, industry, commerce, transport, telecommunications, energy, environment, research, education and professional training; implement common actions and adopt common policies.
The specialized organisms of CEMAC are large of which ISSEA (Institut Sous-Régional de Statistique et d’Économie Appliquée), EIED (Ecole inter Etats des Douanes), ISTA (Institut Sous – Régional Multisectoriel de Technologie Appliquée, de Planification et d'Evaluation des Projets).
The Commission de la CEMAC is responsible for preparing the documentation necessary for the multilateral monitoring system. For this, reliable socio-economic data are necessary to evaluate national performances and to compare domestic situations in the sub-region. To this end, the Commission de la CEMAC aims at improving the quality and harmonisation of statistics of member states, as well as extending their scope.
