Two years after the signing of the public-private partnership contract for the construction of the fourteen automatic toll booths, there has been no real deployment on the sites reserved for this purpose.

10 December 2020. Emmanuel Nganou Djoumessi, Minister of Public Works, lays the foundation stone for the construction of the first 14 automatic toll booths in the locality of Mbankomo Centre region. The net revenue to be returned to the State from this project was expected to rise from CFAF 5.482 billion in 2021 to CFAF 48.995 billion in 2039, the date of the end of the contract for the management of the toll booths. In 2022, nothing is visible on the ground.

The contract for the execution of these works was officially awarded to the Razel BEC-Egis Projects consortium, according to a communiqué signed on 24 April 2019 by the Prime Minister, Joseph Dion Nguté.

“The automatic road tolls in the first phase are being carried out under a public-private partnership with Toulcam the project company set up by the Razel BEC-Egis Projects consortium. The partnership contract has already been signed. It will come into force after the financing has been mobilised.

Toulcam undertook to work with a bank whose financing was to be guaranteed by a structure. Their discussions did not prosper. There is another structure that has agreed to provide this guarantee. The discussions have progressed sufficiently and the Toulcam company has proposed a timetable which indicates that the financing will be in place by next April, so that the work can actually begin,” the Minister of Public Works recently indicated.

On 14 April 2022, a virtual meeting brought together the various actors involved in the implementation of the project.

“Despite the assurances of the private partner in charge of the construction of the automatic toll booths, notably on the completion of the financial closing, a prerequisite according to the partner for the effective start of work on the various sites, the public party, represented by the Ministry of Public Works, is not reassured,” the ministry’s website indicates.

During this meeting, the minister also declared that he was “not in possession of the elements that could lead him not to declare the contract with the private partner Tollcam null and void”.

He also advised the private partner “to start the execution of the contract on certain sites already available such as Mbankomo and Boumnyebel, where the completion of earthworks by the company Razel is visible”.

As a reminder, the works were launched on 10 December 2020. And according to the government’s forecasts, these toll booths alone were to provide 75% of the road toll revenues in Cameroon. Built on the model of a public-private partnership, the 14 automatic toll booths were estimated at CFAF 28.9 billion.